500 years of ecological changes recorded in subfossil Cladocera in a high-altitude, tropical lake Lago de la Luna, central Mexico

We pres ent the last 500 years of his tory of a high-al ti tude trop i cal lake Lago de la Luna lo cated at Nevado de Toluca crater, Cen tral Mex ico, based on subfossil Cladocera anal y sis. Through the stud ied sed i men tary se quence only five Cladocera spe cies were pres ent. Cladocera com mu nity was dom i nated by lit to ral spe cies (4) and among them one (Ilyocryptus nevadensis) is en demic. The de tailed anal y sis of the sed i ments (ev ery 1 cm) al lowed us to track con tem - po rary cli ma tic and anthropogenic changes. Our re sults showed that Lago de la Luna is a very sen si tive eco sys tem and has strong re sponse to cli ma tic changes. The most re mark able change in the Cladocera com mu nity was ob served between 1683–1780 yr, which was well cor re lated with the Lit tle Ice Age. PCA re sults im plied that mod ern state of the lake Lago de la Luna is very sim i lar to one 400–500 yr ago. Only one pe riod was iden ti fied when hu man im pact was of im por tance. This pe riod seemed to cor re late with changes in the lake eco sys tem due to fish in tro duc tion in the 1950s.