Records of zooplankton from 101 alpine lakes in the Western Alps

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 4,463 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Tiberti R (2025). Records of zooplankton from 101 alpine lakes in the Western Alps. Version 1.0. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Ricerca sulle Acque. Occurrence dataset. https://cloud.gbif.org/eca/resource?r=zooplankton_western_alps&v=1.0

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Ricerca sulle Acque. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 0cdbc263-7514-477e-ae3d-c586aed1601c.  Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Ricerca sulle Acque publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Participant Node Managers Committee.

Keywords

Occurrence

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Western Alps, in Europe, at the borders between France and Italy.

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

The survey is part of the research projects PITEM Biodiv’ALP – PS 5217 “Geobiodiv” (2020-2022), LIFE BIOAQUAE (LIFE11 BIO/IT/000020; 2013-2017), LIFE RESQUE ALPYR (LIFE20 NAT/ES/000369; 2022), Biodiversa FISHME (BiodivRestor-280; 2022), FP7 ACQWA Project (Grant Agreement No. 212250; 2008-2010).

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Repeated samples of zooplankton were collected from 101 lakes over a period of 19 years (2006-2024; 1-52 samples per lake; 17-47 samples per year). The sampling frequency and duration varied among lakes; some lakes were sampled throughout the entire 19-year period, while others were sampled for shorter periods (ranging from 2 to 18 years), or in some cases, just for one year. Sampling was primarily conducted in late summer (August-October), to capture the late stage of seasonal succession when most zooplankton species reach their biomass peak. Many lakes were sampled multiple times during the ice-free season (2-8 times per year), including early summer, to account for the strong seasonal dynamics of zooplankton communities. Samples were collected using vertical net hauls (from the bottom to the surface) at the deepest point of each lake, with a conical plankton net (30 or 40 cm diameter, 50 μm mesh). After collection, samples were promptly fixed in the field using either 70% ethanol or Lugol’s iodine solution. Zooplankton samples were then concentrated to a known volume, and 3-5 subsamples of volumes ranging from 0.05 to 1 mL were extracted after homogenization using a wide-bore pipette for counting. Abundance estimates were back-transformed to represent the number of individuals per cubic meter of water. At the conclusion of these operations, the entire sample was examined to identify taxa present at very low-density levels, which may have passed unnoticed due to subsampling. If any were found, their density was fixed to a default value of 0.1 individuals per cubic meter of water.

Method step description:

1. Animals were sorted and isolated in the laboratory under a dissecting microscope. All isolated individuals were identified using a compound microscope to species level when possible, if not to genus or higher taxonomic level.

Additional Metadata