Temperature and ultraviolet radiation on a high mountain daphnid: when do interactions become lethal to highly adapted populations?

Abstract

Aquatic organisms from high mountain lakes experience the profound influence of climate and solar radiation, especially UVR, manifesting those through alterations in physiology, life history, and phenology. Zooplankton, a pivotal component of lake ecosystems, is particularly sensitive to changes in environmental conditions due to their brief life cycles and diminished mobility. In the high mountains of the tropical Andes, it is to be expected that zooplankton populations are adapted to low temperatures and high UVR, as most of the Andean lakes are above 4,000 m asl. This study focuses on Daphnia pulicaria populations originated from high-mountain Andean lakes, investigating their responses to different temperatures and UVR exposure by means of lab experiments. Key findings indicate that temperature is the most important factor impacting population variables, with high temperatures and UVR exposure leading to unfavorable population outcomes. On the other hand, physiological variables (cell viability and pigmentation, measured as melanin) are equally influenced by temperature and UVR exposure. Pigmentation increases with temperature and is accentuated by solar radiation, indicating an adaptive response to mitigate UVR damage. Conversely, cellular viability declines with elevated temperatures and UVR exposure, showing that higher temperatures may offset the protective effects of pigmentation. Overall, these findings underscore the vulnerability of daphnid populations in high-mountain Andean systems to the anticipated climate change impacts, with potential consequences for ecological dynamics in these critical ecosystems. More importantly, they show the importance of studying temperature and UVR (and probably other environmental conditions) as interacting variables, because the results will dramatically differ if each factor is considered separately.

Keywords:

• Interactions
• population growth rate
• maximum population
• melanin

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Acknowledgments

The funding for this project was provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation (SIDA) and the Integral Water Resource Management Program (GIRH-ASDI-UMSS). We also want to thank to Fernando M. Carvajal-Vallejos and two anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions on early versions of this paper.