Functional responses of Daphnia magna to zero-mean flow turbulence

Abstract

Daphnia are important to understanding the biogeochemistry of aquatic ecosystems, mainly because of their ability to filter bacteria, algae and inorganic particles as well. Although there are many studies on the general effects that biotic and abiotic stressors, increased temperature and hypoxia, salinity, metals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, etc., have on Daphnia populations, little is known about the impact elevated turbulence has. Here, we show that turbulence affects Daphnia magna survival, swimming behaviour and filtering capacity. Our data demonstrate that altering their habitat by induced mixing from turbulence, induces an increased filtering capacity of the Daphnia magna individuals, provided the level of background turbulence (defined by the dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy) is lower than ε = 0.04 cm ² s ⁻³. The filtering capacity reduced exponentially with increasing ε, and at ε > 1 cm ² s ⁻³ both mobility and filtration were suppressed and eventually led to the death of all the Daphnia magna individuals.