Moss - Ponds and small lakes microorganisms and freshwater ecology

Naturalists Handbooks 32

Ponds and small lakes

BRIAN MOSS

Pelagic Publishing

www.pelagicpublishing.com

Published by Pelagic Publishing

www.pelagicpublishing.com

PO Box 725, Exeter, EX1 9QU, UK

Ponds and small lakes

Naturalists Handbooks 32

Series Editor

William D.J. Kirk

ISBN 978-1-78427-135-0 (Pbk)

ISBN 978-1-78427-136-7 (ePub)

ISBN 978-1-78427-137-4 (Mobi)

ISBN 978-1-78427-138-1 (PDF)

Text Pelagic Publishing 2017

Brian Moss asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Apart from short excerpts for use in research or for reviews, no part of this document may be printed or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, now known or hereafter invented or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover

Top: Bystock Pools nature reserve, Devon. Bottom, left to right: SEM photographs by D.N. Furness, a ciliate (Coleps species), a diatom, an amoeba; and by Per Harald Olsen/NTNU (CC BY 2.0), Daphnia magna.

Contents

Editors preface

Nearly everyone has some kind of pond or small lake nearby. It could be a village pond or a pond in a garden, park or nature reserve. They are all around us, but there is still much that we do not understand about them.

Ponds and small lakes support an extremely rich biodiversity of fascinating organisms. Many people have tried pond-dipping and encountered a few unfamiliar creatures, such as dragonfly nymphs and caddisfly larvae. However, there is a far richer world of microscopic organisms, such as diatoms, desmids and rotifers, which is revealed in this book. Anyone with access to a microscope can open up this hidden dimension. Identification keys are provided so that readers can identify, explore and study this microscopic world. There are also many suggestions of ways in which readers can then make original contributions to our knowledge and understanding of pond ecology. It is not even necessary to have access to a pond to be able to study them because artificial ponds that will quickly develop communities of microorganisms can be created easily from jam jars or plastic buckets filled with rainwater.

The book not only explores the fascinating world of the creatures within ponds and their interactions, but also explains the many ways in which ponds are important in human affairs. Ponds are being lost around the world, but they are a key part of a system that maintains our climate. In the face of climate change, it has never been more important to understand the ecology of ponds.

Sadly, Brian Moss, the author, was diagnosed with terminal cancer towards the end of writing the book. Despite this, he continued to work hard on it, knowing his time was limited. Only the acknowledgements were not completed. He passed away in May 2016, before the book was published. Brians interest, enthusiasm and commitment to ponds live on in this book. I am confident that this book will enable more people to appreciate and investigate these fascinating and important habitats.

William D.J. Kirk

July 2016

Preface

Why study a pond?

Its fun says A, the enthusiastic naturalist.

Its in the syllabus, snaps B, the disillusioned teacher.

Well, says C, the calculating careerist, I believe it might throw light on a problem which interests X and Y. They are two coming men, and if I can catch their eye I shall have friends at court in a few years time when I am looking for a top post.

A pond presents a limited environment without a continual interchange of population with neighbouring biotopes and is, therefore, suitable for the study of principles, enunciates D, the serious ecologist.

World starvation is a real threat. In many tropical lands an important amount of protein is raised in ponds. We should study production in ponds wherever we can explains E, the scientist with a social conscience.

We can ignore B and C; A,D and E merit our attention.

The first paragraph of Ponds and Lakes by T.T. Macan, published by Allen and Unwin in 1973.

Brian Moss

April 2016

About the author

Getting wet and muddy was a childhood trait that Brian Moss never quite grew out of. His research and teaching embraced freshwaters on five continents over fifty years, a range of approaches from field survey to laboratory and whole-lake experiments and a gamut of sites from lakes in Malawi, Tanzania and Michigan, to thermal streams in Iceland, the Norfolk Broads, the North-West Midland Meres and temperature-controlled ponds at the University of Liverpools Botanic Gardens. When he retired from Liverpool as Professor of Botany in 2008, he was spending at least as much time with invertebrates and fish as with plants and algae.

His work has been widely published, with a textbook, The Ecology of Freshwaters, soon to appear in its fifth edition, books in the New Naturalist series on The Broads and Loughs and Lochs, and a manual on lake restoration. He has been President of the International Society for Limnology and Vice-President of the British Ecological Society.

He was awarded the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Managements annual medal for his lifes work and leadership in shallow-lake research in 2010, and the Ecology Institutes Excellence in Ecology prize in 2009. This entailed the writing of a book, Liberation Ecology, which interprets ecology for the general public through the media of the fine arts. The book won the Marsh Prize, in 2013, for the best ecology book published in the previous year. Brian loved teaching, playing the double bass (not very well), writing satirical doggerel, often directed at officialdom, and was exercised daily by a large dog.

About Naturalists Handbooks

Naturalists Handbooks encourage and enable those interested in natural history to undertake field study, make accurate identifications and make original contributions to research. A typical reader may be studying natural history at sixth-form or undergraduate level, carrying out species/habitat surveys as an ecological consultant, undertaking academic research or just developing a deeper understanding of natural history.

History of the Naturalists Handbooks series

The Naturalists Handbooks series was first published by Cambridge University Press, then Richmond Publishing and then the Company of Biologists. In 2010 Pelagic Publishing began to publish new titles in the series together with updated editions of popular titles such as Bumblebees and Ladybirds. If you are interested in writing a book in this series, or have a suggestion for a good title please contact the series editor.

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