@article{6dc10cc1064945e19c8d8b30fc116dd4,
title = "Modelling the population dynamics of Daphnia obtusa (Kurz) in Lake Orta (N. Italy) under pre- and post-liming conditions",
abstract = "A mathematical matrix model was formulated to investigate the response of Daphnia obtusa population dynamics to the changes in the water chemistry of Lake Orta before and after the liming operation. Model parameters were estimated from experimental laboratory data. Model analysis showed that water chemistry changes induced by liming affected mainly egg survival and predicted the highest population growth at pH 6. Whereas increased egg mortality heavily inhibits population growth rate, the model still predicts a long term tendency of the population to increase in number. However, both before and after the liming operation due to high food availability in the laboratory, egg production was higher under all experimental conditions than in the field. When food limitation is accounted for and more realistic, field based estimates of egg production are used, the model predicts the extinction of D. obtusa population in the lake. This suggests that the effects of water chemistry changes on egg mortality had a critical role in the disappearance of D. obtusa from Lake Orta and may even adequately explain the extinction of this population.",
keywords = "Daphnia, Lake recovery, Liming, Matrix models, Population dynamics, Zooplankton",
author = "Carla Bonacina and Waleed Hamza and Andrea Pasteris",
note = "Funding Information: One of the advantages of conducting multidisciplinary long-term studies on lakes is the emergence of coherent datasets on the ecosystem. Long-term studies enable us to reconstruct the lakes{\textquoteright} historical features and to predict the future conditions under which the various components of their ecosystems have to interact. A good example of this assertion is Lake Orta, whose water quality and ecosystem parameters have been regularly monitored since the beginning of last century. The response of the Lake Orta ecosystem to the dramatic changes in its water quality caused by industrial pollution (mainly copper and ammonium sulphates from a textile factory), which resulted in massive acidification of the water, a rise in concentrations of heavy metals, and finally in the destruction of the food web, has been well documented by many authors from onset of pollution in 1926 to the present (see, for example Monti 1930; Baldi 1949; Vollenweider 1963; Bon-acina 1970; Bonacina and Bonomi 1974; Mosello et al. 1986; Bonacina et al. 1987; Hamza et al. 1998a; Bonacina 2001). These studies provided the conceptual basis for a liming operation, first proposed in 1984 (Bonacina and Bonomi 1984), funded by the Italian Ministry for the Environment in",
year = "2005",
month = jun,
doi = "10.1007/s10452-004-3855-y",
language = "English",
volume = "39",
pages = "93--106",
journal = "Aquatic Ecology",
issn = "1386-2588",
publisher = "Kluwer Academic Publishers",
number = "1",
}