Temperature, nutrients and planktivorous fish predation interact to drive crustacean zooplankton in a large plateau lake, southwest China

Introduction of planktivorous fish or eutrophication can alter lake food webs, especially the zooplankton communities are susceptible to changes in top–down and bottom-up controls, and eventually lead to the dominance of harmful cyanobacteria. Hence, for the recovery of large-size zooplankton abundance that graze on cyanobacteria, there is an urgency to understand the relative roles of top–down and bottom-up effects. Although much is known about these two effects in temperate lakes, little knowledge about their relative importance in subtropical highland lakes exists, where eutrophication and stocked planktivorous fish are of particular concern. Thus, we conducted research in Lake Erhai in Yunnan plateau, China, to examine the drivers affecting the dynamics of crustacean zooplankton. Redundancy analysis (RDA) was used to analyze the effects of environmental variables, phytoplankton biomass, and planktivorous fish on the biomass and body weight of zooplankton taxa in the lake, and variance decomposition analysis was applied to examine the relative roles of the bottom–up and top–down controlling factors on zooplankton biomass. The results of RDA and Pearson correction analysis showed that total nitrogen (TN) in the water column affected phytoplankton and altered the biomass of cladocerans, while water temperature directly affects the biomass of cladocerans. These findings indicate a pronounced bottom–up control link exists from nutrients to phytoplankton, and then to zooplankton. The abundance of Japanese smelt was negatively correlated both with the biomass and body weight of cladocerans. This finding suggests the pronounced top–down control link exists from fish to zooplankton. The results of variance decomposition analysis showed that TN and zooplanktivorous predation were more important in driving total zooplankton biomass, while TN, water temperature and fish predation were more essential in the variation of zooplankton biomass. Our study provides a reference for the recovery of large-size zooplankton populations in eutrophicated lakes.