Factors Influencing Plankton Community Structure and Production in Freshwater Lakes

Abstract

Relationships among biomasses and levels of production of nannoplankton, netplankton, herbivorous zooplankton, and carnivorous zooplankton, as well their dependence on environmental parameters, were studied in 26 central Ontario lakes. Planktonic biomasses were only weakly correlated with each other. Correlations were improved by converting biomasses to production estimates using size-specific turnover rate corrections on size-structured data. Further use of size-structured data was of limited value. Sets of environmental parameters, particularly the water chemistry data, were better predictors of planktonic biomasses and productions than other biotic (predator/prey) data. Total Kjeldahl nitrogen was a better predictor of total plankton production estimates than total phosphorus. Lakes could not be clustered into stable community types due to the large year-to-year fluctuations in the data.