<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<EFGs>
   <EFG code="F2.1" update="2020-06-24" version="v2.0">
      <Realms>
         <Realm>Freshwater</Realm>
      </Realms>
      <Biome>F2. Lakes biome</Biome>
      <Name>F2.1 Large permanent freshwater lakes</Name>
      <Short-name>F2.1 Large perm lakes</Short-name>
      <Contributors>
         <contributor>RT Kingsford</contributor>
         <contributor>R Mac Nally</contributor>
         <contributor>LJ Jackson</contributor>
         <contributor>F Essl</contributor>
         <contributor>K Irvine</contributor>
         <contributor>DA Keith</contributor>
         <map-contributor>JR Ferrer-Paris</map-contributor>
         <map-contributor>DA Keith</map-contributor>
      </Contributors>
      <Short-description>Large volumes of permanent water in these lakes buffers water temperatures and effects of nutrient input on water quality. The spatial extent and range of habitats support very large numbers of species in some groups such as fish, some of which are unique to a single lake, often composed of closely related species, endemic to a lake. The high primary productivity from algae and aquatic plants lake supports diverse foodwebs. High numbers of plankton support large numbers of waterbugs, fish, frogs, reptiles, waterbirds, and mammals. Bacteria play key roles in cycling organic matter.</Short-description>
      <Ecological-traits updated="2020-05-24 16:58:26">Large permanent freshwater lakes, generally exceeding 100 km2, are prominent landscape features connected to one or more rivers either terminally or as flow-through systems. Shoreline complexity, depth, bathymetric stratification, and benthic topography promote niche diversity and zonation. High niche diversity and large volumes of permanent water (extensive, stable, connected habitat) support complex trophic webs with high diversity and abundance. High primary productivity may vary seasonally, driving succession, depending on climate, light availability, and nutrient regimes. Autochthonous energy from abundant pelagic algae (mainly diatoms and cyanobacteria) and from benthic macrophytes and algal biofilms (in shallow areas) is supplemented by allochthonous inflows that depend on catchment characteristics, climate, season, and hydrological connectivity. Zooplankton, invertebrate consumers, and herbivorous fish sustain high planktonic turnover and support upper trophic levels with abundant and diverse predatory fish, amphibians, reptiles, waterbirds, and mammals. This bottom-up web is coupled to a microbial loop, which returns dissolved organic matter to the web (rapidly in warm temperatures) via heterotrophic bacteria. Obligate freshwater biota in large lakes, including aquatic macrophytes and macroinvertebrates (e.g. crustaceans) and fish, often display high catchment-level endemism, in part due to long histories of environmental variability in isolation. Marked niche differentiation in life history and behavioural feeding and reproductive traits enables sympatric speciation and characterises the most diverse assemblages of macroinvertebrates and fish (e.g. ~500 cichlid fish species in Lake Victoria). Large predators are critical in top-down regulation of lower trophic levels. Large lake volume buffers against nutrient-mediated change from oligotrophic to eutrophic states. Recruitment of many organisms is strongly influenced by physical processes such as large inflow events. Mobile birds and terrestrial mammals use the lakes as breeding sites and/or sources of drinking water and play key roles in the inter-catchment transfer of nutrients and organic matter and the dispersal of biota.</Ecological-traits>
      <Key-ecological-drivers updated="2020-05-24 16:58:50">Large water volumes influence resource availability, environmental stability (through thermal buffering), and niche diversity. Water is from catchment inflows, which may vary seasonally with climate. Large lakes influence regional climate through evaporation, cooling, and convection feedbacks. These processes also influence nutrient availability, along with catchment and lake substrates and vertical mixing. Mixing may be monomictic (i.e. annual) or meromictic (i.e. seldom), especially in large tropical lakes, depending on inflow, depth, wind regimes, and seasonal temperature variation. Light varies with lake depth, turbidity, cloud cover, and latitude.</Key-ecological-drivers>
      <Distribution updated="2020-05-24 16:58:26">Humid temperate and tropical regions on large land masses.</Distribution>
      <Map code="F2.1.IM.alt" version="v4.0">Locations of large lakes (&gt;100km2)were taken from the HydroLAKES database (Messager et al. 2016) and combined with global estimates of permanent surface water surfaces (classes 1, 2 and 7 from Pekel et al. 2016). Freeze/thaw lakes in boreal and polar climates (temperature of coldest quarter &gt; -10°C) were excluded (Beck et al. 2018) (see F2.3). Occurrences were aggregated to 30 arc second spatial resolution.</Map>
      <References>
         <Reference name="Beck et al. 2018">Beck, H., Zimmermann, N., McVicar, T. et al. (2018) Present and future Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps at 1-km resolution Sci Data 5, 180214 DOI:10.1038/sdata.2018.214</Reference>
         <Reference name="Ludsin SA, DeVanna KM, Smith REH  2014">Ludsin SA, DeVanna KM, Smith REH  (2014) Physical-biological coupling and the challenge of understanding fish recruitment in freshwater lakes Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 71: 775-794 DOI:10.1139/cjfas-2013-0512</Reference>
         <Reference name="Messager et al. 2016">Messager, M.L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., Schmitt, O.  (2016) Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach Nature Communications 13603 DOI:10.1038/ncomms13603</Reference>
         <Reference name="Pekel et al. 2016">Pekel JF, Cottam A, Gorelick N, Belward AS (2016) High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes Nature 540, 418-422 DOI:10.1038/nature20584</Reference>
         <Reference name="Pennisi E  2018">Pennisi E  (2018) Hybrids spawned Lake Victoria's rich fish diversity Science 361: 539-539 DOI:10.1126/science.361.6402.539</Reference>
      </References>
   </EFG>
</EFGs>
