A recurrent question in ecology is the influence of environmental factors, particularly nutrients and climatic variables, on community structure and functioning, and their interaction with internal community processes (e.g. competition).

Perialpine lakes have been subject to two main kinds of human-induced changes over the last fifty years: eutrophication - reoligotrophication, represented by lake-specific changes in total phosphorus concentration (TP), and long-term global climatic change, captured by average winter temperature (AWT).

Changes in fish communities (abundance of seven species from fishery data) in 11 Perialpine lakes during 31 years (1970–2000) were investigated in relation to variation in TP and AWT using models incorporating the effects of fish maturation age, and potentially discriminating effects on adult survival and recruitment.

We show that phosphorus concentration affects fish abundance in species-specific ways. These effects are mediated by recruitment rather than by adult survival. Phosphorus effects are probably modulated by interspecific interactions, as increasing TP enhances total community biomass, which in turn is either positively or negatively associated with species abundance depending on species position in trophic chains.

Climatic change has very little effect on fish abundances, which is not consistent with the prediction of larger changes in species near their southern distribution boundary.

We propose several hypotheses to account for those findings, and place our study in the wider framework of community ecology.