Some problems in the study of population dynamics of zooplankton

Abstract

Some recent results on ecology and population dynamics in fresh water filter feeding zooplankton are presented.

The difficulty in interpreting field experimental results led us to analyze some of the relevant biotic and abiotic population interactions under laboratory conditions.

The aim of these experiments was to arrive at a phenomenology that might help in interpreting field results and in furnishing a reliable support for parallel research on modelling.

Here are presented three sets of experiments that compare the effects of temperature, inter and intra-specific competition for food and space and the different levels of selective predation on the demographic parameters and the population dynamics in freshwater cladocerans.