MAR analyses of community time-series showed that water temperature was the dominant driver of change in the zooplankton community competitive interactions were relatively rare, and only copepods (both cyclopoids and calanoids) were affected by predation (juvenile sockeye salmon). During this time period there has been a strong trend towards earlier spring ice breakup dates and warmer summer water temperatures. We used a multivariate autoregressive (MAR) modeling framework to assess the strengths of intrinsic interactions and extrinsic (environmental) forcing responsible for changes in the zooplankton community of a sockeye salmon nursery lake in southwestern Alaska from 1963 to 2009. Climate change may alter communities in unexpected ways when environmental drivers have complex effects on individual species that are then transmitted indirectly to other species via biotic interactions.
Ecological communities are organized by interactions among the biota, and between the biota and external environmental drivers that affect the dynamics of individual taxa.
