AUTHOR=Camatti Elisa , Acri Francesco , De Lazzari Amelia , Nurra Nicola , Pansera Marco , Schroeder Anna , Bergamasco Alessandro 

TITLE=Natural or anthropogenic variability? A long-term pattern of the zooplankton communities in an ever-changing transitional ecosystem

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1176829

DOI=10.3389/fmars.2023.1176829

ISSN=2296-7745

ABSTRACT=The Venice Lagoon is an important site belonging to the Italian Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER). Alongside with the increasing trend of water temperature and the relevant morphological changes, in recent years, the resident zooplankton populations have also had to cope with the colonization by alien species, in particular the strong competitor Mnemiopsis leidyi Agassiz, 1865. In this work, we compared the dynamics of the lagoon zooplankton communities over a period of twenty years. The physical and biological signals are analyzed and compared to evaluate the hypothesis that a slow shift in the environmental balance of the site, such as rising temperatures, “marinization” and competition between species, is contributing to trigger a drift in the internal equilibrium of the resident core zooplankton communities. Though the copepod community does not seem to have changed its state, some important modifications of structure and assembly mechanisms have been already observed. The extension of the marine influence within the lagoon has compressed the spatial gradients of the habitat and created a greater segregation of the niches available to some typically estuarine taxa and broadened and strengthened the interactions between marine species.