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Trophic transfer efficiency (TTE) is usually calculated as the ratio of production rates between two consecutive trophic levels. Although seemingly simple, TTE estimates from lakes are rare. In our review, we explore the processes and structures that must be understood for a proper lake TTE estimate. We briefly discuss measurements of production rates and trophic positions and mention how ecological efficiencies, nutrients (N, P) and other compounds (fatty acids) affect energy transfer between trophic levels and hence TTE. Furthermore, we elucidate how TTE estimates are linked with size-based approaches according to the Metabolic Theory of Ecology, and how food-web models can be applied to study TTE in lakes. Subsequently, we explore temporal and spatial heterogeneity of production and TTE in lakes, with a particular focus on the links between benthic and pelagic habitats and between the lake and the terrestrial environment. We provide an overview of TTE estimates from lakes found in the published literature. Finally, we present two alternative approaches to estimating TTE. First, TTE can be seen as a mechanistic quantity informing about the energy and matter flow between producer and consumer groups. This approach is informative with respect to food-web structure, but requires enormous amounts of data. The greatest uncertainty comes from the proper consideration of basal production to estimate TTE of omnivorous organisms. An alternative approach is estimating food-chain and food-web efficiencies, by comparing the heterotrophic production of single consumer levels or the total sum of all heterotrophic production including that of heterotrophic bacteria to the total sum of primary production. We close the review by pointing to a few research questions that would benefit from more frequent and standardized estimates of TTE in lakes.

Nearshore (littoral) habitats of clear lakes with high water quality are increasingly experiencing unexplained proliferations of filamentous algae that grow on submerged surfaces. These filamentous algal blooms (FABs) are sometimes associated with nutrient pollution in groundwater, but complex changes in climate, nutrient transport, lake hydrodynamics, and food web structure may also facilitate this emerging threat to clear lakes. A coordinated effort among members of the public, managers, and scientists is needed to document the occurrence of FABs, to standardize methods for measuring their severity, to adapt existing data collection networks to include nearshore habitats, and to mitigate and reverse this profound structural change in lake ecosystems. Current models of lake eutrophication do not explain this littoral greening. However, a cohesive response to it is essential for protecting some of the world's most valued lakes and the flora, fauna, and ecosystem services they sustain.

Despite substantial advances in quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dry inland waters, existing estimates mainly consist of carbon dioxide (CO

Since the late 1990s, the central basin of Lake Erie has reputedly experienced an increase in the frequency and severity of hypoxic events. However, total phosphorus (TP) loading, in-lake TP concentrations, chlorophyll a (Chl a ), and sediment oxygen demand (SOD) have all declined in the central basin since the 1970s. Water clarity in this basin has declined from the 1970s to 2000s despite the invasion of dreissenid mussels around 1990. In shallow lakes, declines in benthic primary production (PP) can generate positive feedback loops between the internal loading of nutrients/dissolved organic carbon and hypoxic/anoxic conditions in the water column. Such a hypoxia-inducing mechanism driven by declines in benthic PP has not been explored in Lake Erie. To test if a decline in benthic PP might explain hypoxic events in the central basin of Lake Erie, we calculated the inter-decadal changes in benthic and planktonic algal production in this basin from the 1970s to the 2000s. Primary production models using water column Chl a concentrations and light attenuation indicated that benthic PP represents roughly 10% of the basin's total areal PP. However, our calculations show that benthic PP declined from approximately 540 to 200 g C/m 2 y since the 1970s. We propose that a decline in benthic PP may have played a key mechanistic role in the transition from externally-induced hypoxia (i.e. watershed nutrient loading fueling phytoplankton production) in the 1970s and 80s to internally-induced hypoxia (sediment resuspension and internal loading) since the late 1990s.

Recent studies of Lake Superior, the Earth's largest freshwater lake by surface area, describe it as net heterotrophic (primary production

Shallow lakes, the most prevalent type of freshwater ecosystems, can shift between clear states with macrophyte dominance and turbid, phytoplankton-dominated states. Such transformations, commonly termed regime shifts, have gained increasing attention in recent decades. Of 1084 studies documenting regime shifts, only 28% investigated the consequences for ecosystem functions and services such as habitat (13%), carbon processing (4%), or nutrient retention (4%). Although there is general consensus that a clear macrophyte state supports a higher diversity of aquatic organisms than a turbid one, the effects of shifts on primary production, carbon burial, greenhouse-gas emissions, and nutrient retention remain ambiguous. Shifts between the two states also affect drinking-water quality and the recreational value of lakes, leading to conflicting management measures and potentially deteriorating natural functions. We call for more comprehensive studies on the effects of regime shifts on ecosystem functions in shallow lakes to guide their sustainable management.

Over the last 20 years there has been a surge of interest in paleolimnology and as a result a large accumulation of lake sedimentation records. This emerging archive has allowed us to develop empirical models to describe which variables explain significant variation in sedimentation rates over the past ∼150 years across large spatial scales. We hypothesized that latitude would be a significant explanatory variable of profundal zone lake sedimentation rates across a temperate to polar gradient. We further hypothesized that along a more longitudinally-constrained dataset (i.e. east coast of North America), latitude would explain a greater proportion of the variance. To test these hypotheses, we collated data from 125 natural, average-sized lakes (with surface area

Anthropogenic activities can induce major trophic shifts in aquatic systems, yet we have an incomplete understanding of the implication of such shifts on ecosystem function and on primary production (PP) in particular. In recent decades, phytoplankton biomass and production in the Laurentian Great Lakes have declined in response to reduced nutrient concentrations and invasive mussels. However, the increases in water clarity associated with declines in phytoplankton may have positive effects on benthic PP at the ecosystem scale. Have these lakes experienced oligotrophication (a reduction of algal production), or simply a shift in autotrophic structure with no net decline in PP? Benthic contributions to ecosystem PP are rarely measured in large aquatic systems, but our calculations based on productivity rates from the Great Lakes indicate that a significant proportion (up to one half, in Lake Huron) of their whole-lake production may be benthic. The large declines (5-45%) in phytoplankton production in the Great Lakes from the 1970s to 2000s may be substantially compensated by benthic PP, which increased by up to 190%. Thus, the autotrophic productive capacity of large aquatic ecosystems may be relatively resilient to shifts in trophic status, due to a redirection of production to the near-shore benthic zone, and large lakes may exhibit shifts in autotrophic structure analogous to the regime shifts seen in shallow lakes.