Phytoplankton responses to temperature increases are constrained by abiotic conditions and community composition.

ABSTRACT: Effects of temperature changes on phytoplankton communities seem to be highly context-specific, but few studies have analyzed whether this context specificity depends on differences in the abiotic conditions or in species composition between studies. We present an experiment that allows disentangling the contribution of abiotic and biotic differences in shaping the response to two aspects of temperature change: permanent increase of mean temperature versus pulse disturbance in form of a heat wave. We used natural communities from six different sites of a floodplain system as well as artificially mixed communities from laboratory cultures and grew both, artificial and natural communities, in water from the six different floodplain lakes (sites). All 12 contexts (2 communities × 6 sites) wer

SUBMITTER: Striebel M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5042995 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature