Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2021
Publication Title
Scientific Reports
Department
Department of Biological Sciences
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 μm) and larger sized plankton (microplankton; 40–200 μm), 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.
DOI
10.1038/s41598-021-95742-9
Original Citation
Wu, P., Kainz, M.J., Valdés, F. et al. Elevated temperature and browning increase dietary methylmercury, but decrease essential fatty acids at the base of lake food webs. Sci Rep 11, 16859 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95742-9
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Wu, Pianpian; Kainz, Martin J.; Valdés, Fernando; Zheng, Siwen; Winter, Katharina; Wang, Rui; Branfireun, Brian; Chen, Celia Y.; and Bishop, Kevin, "Elevated temperature and browning increase dietary methylmercury, but decrease essential fatty acids at the base of lake food webs" (2021). Dartmouth Scholarship. 4196.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/4196
