As part of the ERC “MetaChange” Project, we are embarking on a resurvey campaign for one particular kind of metacommunity—zooplankton in small freshwater ponds and wetlands— resampling ponds that were surveyed 10+ years previously.
By resurveying pond clusters embedded in landscapes with different local and landscape-level contexts, we will look at how landscape and local changes interact to alter patterns of biodiversity across scales. We place emphasis on capturing different forms of change, such as changes in landscape features and local environments.
In the summer of 2025, we began our resurvey field campaign in Belgium, where we resampled ponds that were sampled by our colleagues at KU Leuven.
Image of a vial containing pond water with zooplankton
Minghua Shen sampled over 50 ponds as part of this study as part of her PhD.
The sampling team, comprised of Minghua Shen, Alban Sagouis, Irina Kalmanova and Leonie Schilling and under the leadership and supervision of Prof. Jonathan Chase, spent a total of 6 weeks collecting samples from ponds across Belgium. They received additional support from hydrobiologists Yuhan He and Kanshun Zhao from the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki.
Due to the very seasonal nature of the zooplankton life cycle, it was important that sampling take place in July and early August, as sampling outside of this time period would lead to misleading results.
2025 turned out to be historically dry summer, due to very little rain having fallen in the spring. When the team arrived in Belgium, they were surprised to find how many ponds had completely dried up. But while some ponds had clearly dried up this year, many had already been drying up and becoming overgrown over many years.
In the outline of this pond, it is visible that it has been drying up over the years.
In some ponds there was so little water left that they could not be sampled.
Collaborators
The Belgium pond resampling campaign is based on these studies:
The MANSCAPE project comprises species occurrence data of eight different organism groups (phytoplankton, diatoms, zooplankton, benthic chironomids, aquatic macro-invertebrates, macrophytes, amphibians and fish) and data on physical, chemical and morphometric variables of 126 small farmland ponds distributed over almost the entire Belgian territory. The samples were taken in 2003. You can view the dataset here: https://data.freshwaterbiodiversity.eu/ipt/resource?r=manscape
The TIPPINGPOND dataset represents a re-sampling of a subset of 61 MANSCAPE ponds in 2013. You can find out more about the study here: https://www.biodiversa.eu/2022/10/31/tippingpond/
The PONDSCAPE project conducted research on patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem functions in ponds at multiple spatial scales, and relates these to important factors and processes, such as succession, land use, pollution, pond creation and pond management. More about the study here: https://www.pondscape.be.
This project is conducted in collaboration with KU Leuven.
Funding
Funding
This project is part of ERC Advanced Grant 101098020 “MetaChange” awarded to Prof. Jonathan Chase.
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Contact
Martina Schliessler
Scientific Coordinator
Phone: +49 341 9739223
Email: martina.schliessler@idiv.de
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Minghua Shen
Scholarship Holder
Phone: +49 341 9739161
Email: minghua.shen@idiv.de
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