Zooplankton Dominance Shift in Response to Climate-Driven Salinity Change: A Mesocosm Study

Climate change predictions indicate global changes in salinity with negative implications for plankton food webs; an important baseline functioning of marine ecosystems. Current understanding how will impact communities is mostly limited to the salinization freshwater environments, little known about effects changing systems. In this study, we investigate effect on zooplankton under different scenarios Baltic Sea. Projections future derived from regional physical-biogeochemical models were used set-up outdoor mesocosm experiment coastal area Gulf Finland. Each was inoculated natural using a mixture both and communities, mimicking influx species rivers into Zooplankton diversity composition changed possibly due tolerances among species. Among zooplankton, rotifers dominated low salinities (74%) cladocerans copepods (69%) high salinities. Our results suggest that community shift rotifer areas declining intolerance other groups freshening.