The role of fish predators and their foraging traits in shaping zooplankton community structure

Differentiation of foraging traits among predator populations may help explain observed variation in the structure of prey communities. However, few studies have investigated the phenotypic effects of predators on their prey in natural communities. Here, we use a comparative analysis of 78 Greenlandic lakes to examine how foraging trait variation among threespine stickleback populations can help explain variation in zooplankton community composition among lakes. We find that landscape-scale variation in zooplankton composition was jointly explained by lake properties, such as size and water chemistry, and the presence and absence of both stickleback and arctic char. Additional variation in zooplankton community structure can be explained by stickleback jaw protrusion, a trait with known utility for foraging on zooplankton, but only in lakes where stickleback co-occur with arctic char. Overall, our results illustrate how trait variation of consumers, alongside other ecosystem properties,..., , , # Data from: The role of fish predators and their foraging traits in shaping zooplankton community structure

The dataset \"ELE_00721_2023_Lake_data.csv\" contains the data of 78 Greenlandic lakes, including their coordinate positions, lake morphometry measurements, fish community composition, physio-chemical chemical parameters obtained with EXO multiparameter sonde, stickelback denisty, the abundance of zooplankton speices and the mean phenotypic traits of the stickelback populations. This dataset was analysed with the R-script \"ELE_00721_2023_Lake_data_Lake_analysis.R\"

## Description of the data and file structure

The file \"ELE_00721_2023_Lake_data.csv\" contains the follwing collumns:

| Lake ID: | A unique identifier for the lake |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------...