Zooplankton egg banks as biotic reservoirs in changing environments

Abstract

The long‐lived diapausing eggs of zooplankton constitute an ecological and evolutionary reservoir that can impact the rate and direction of population, community, and ecosystem response to environmental change. Viable diapausing eggs are often extremely abundant and can survive in aquatic sediments for decades or longer. As the mean environment changes, the frequency of extreme conditions will likely increase, and species with prolonged diapause will be able to survive extreme years of no recruitment, whereas species lacking an egg bank will not. An altered environment may change which species have poor recruitment and even, through effects on thermal diapause cues, which species produce an egg bank. The interaction between environmental variation and generation overlap (produced by prolonged diapause) results in the maintenance of biotic diversity (both species richness and genetic variation), which forms the foundation for response to future environmental change.