Wu, Pianpian and Kainz, Martin J. and Valdes, Fernando and Zheng, Siwen and Winter, Katharina and Wang, Rui and Branfireun, Brian and Chen, Celia Y. and Bishop, Kevin
(2021).
Elevated temperature and browning increase dietary methylmercury, but decrease essential fatty acids at the base of lake food webs.
Scientific Reports. 11
, 16859
[Research article]
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Abstract
Climate change scenarios predict increases in temperature and organic matter supply from land to water, which affect trophic transfer of nutrients and contaminants in aquatic food webs. How essential nutrients, such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), and potentially toxic contaminants, such as methylmercury (MeHg), at the base of aquatic food webs will be affected under climate change scenarios, remains unclear. The objective of this outdoor mesocosm study was to examine how increased water temperature and terrestrially-derived dissolved organic matter supply (tDOM; i.e., lake browning), and the interaction of both, will influence MeHg and PUFA in organisms at the base of food webs (i.e. seston; the most edible plankton size for zooplankton) in subalpine lake ecosystems. The interaction of higher temperature and tDOM increased the burden of MeHg in seston (< 40 mu m) and larger sized plankton (microplankton; 40-200 mu m), while the MeHg content per unit biomass remained stable. However, PUFA decreased in seston, but increased in microplankton, consisting mainly of filamentous algae, which are less readily bioavailable to zooplankton. We revealed elevated dietary exposure to MeHg, yet decreased supply of dietary PUFA to aquatic consumers with increasing temperature and tDOM supply. This experimental study provides evidence that the overall food quality at the base of aquatic food webs deteriorates during ongoing climate change scenarios by increasing the supply of toxic MeHg and lowering the dietary access to essential nutrients of consumers at higher trophic levels.
Authors/Creators: | Wu, Pianpian and Kainz, Martin J. and Valdes, Fernando and Zheng, Siwen and Winter, Katharina and Wang, Rui and Branfireun, Brian and Chen, Celia Y. and Bishop, Kevin | ||||||
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Title: | Elevated temperature and browning increase dietary methylmercury, but decrease essential fatty acids at the base of lake food webs | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Scientific Reports | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2021 | ||||||
Volume: | 11 | ||||||
Article number: | 16859 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 10 | ||||||
Publisher: | NATURE PORTFOLIO | ||||||
ISSN: | 2045-2322 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 105 Earth and Related Environmental Sciences > Climate Research (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 105 Earth and Related Environmental Sciences > Environmental Sciences (social aspects to be 507) | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-113603 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-113603 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
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ID Code: | 25459 | ||||||
Faculty: | NJ - Fakulteten för naturresurser och jordbruksvetenskap | ||||||
Department: | (NL, NJ) > Dept. of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 20 Sep 2021 12:25 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 20 Sep 2021 12:31 |
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