Seasonal distribution of mesozooplankton in the upper 100 m of the northern Gulf of Aqaba in 2002 and 2003

DOI

The abundance and composition of the mesozooplankton were studied in the upper 100 m of the northern Gulf of Aqaba over a period of 22 months between February 2002 and December 2003. The samples were collected monthly with a Nansen net of 200 μm mesh size. The abundance of total mesozooplankton ranged between 245 and 3065 ind. m⁻³. Highest densities in 2002 were recorded in spring (March/April) and in autumn (October/November), while several peaks occurred in 2003 with maximum abundance in early summer (June/July). Copepods dominated the mesozooplankton community during the whole sampling period (~79%), followed by mollusc larvae (8%), appendicularians (2.5%) and chaetognaths (2.4%). Within the copepods, calanoids were predominant throughout the sampling period (41–83%). Cyclopoid copepods accounted for 17 to 59%, while harpacticoids occurred only in very low numbers (<1%). Within the calanoid copepods, Clausocalanidae, Paracalanidae and Acartiidae were abundant, accounting for 84 to 98% of the calanoids.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.891331
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbl057
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmarsys.2007.01.001
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-006-0569-9
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.891331
Provenance
Creator Cornils, Astrid ORCID logo; Schnack-Schiel, Sigrid B
Publisher PANGAEA
Contributor Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven (1986-2013)
Publication Year 2018
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 5229 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (34.965 LON, 29.464 LAT); Northern Gulf of Aqaba (Aqaba/Jordan, Red Sea)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2002-02-26T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2003-12-02T00:00:00Z