133. The Effects of Habitat Variation on Population Parameters in Experimental Aquatic Systems (I-12-WANG-071)

The main objectives of our project are to use experiments to investigate how food amount, connectivity, habitat quality and habitat size impact the population size of Daphnia carinata and its time to extinction. Due to coronavirus, we did not get to conduct our own experiments, therefore two existing experiments were used: Habitat quality experiment and Habitat patch experiment.

The results are that the largest population size occurs when the food amount is adequate, and the nutritional value of food is high. Moreover, for Daphnia, only food in the home patch has an effect on mean population size and time to extinction. In other words, food outside the home patch cannot stimulate Daphnia to migrate in an attempt to find more food. Apart from this, higher habitat quality contributes to higher carrying capacity (the maximum population prior to environmental degradation) and higher population growth rate. Population growth rate is a dominant factor for time to extinction in comparison to habitat size. Therefore, when it comes to conservation of endangered species, improving habitat quality is the most effective approach.

Yingjie Fan

Luyan Shi

Andi Feng