Abundance of copepods during POLARSTERN cruise ANT-XXI/2 (BENDIX)

DOI

The main emphasis of this study was to analyse the short-term development of abundance, population structure and vertical distribution of the dominant calanoid copepods during a phytoplankton bloom in the coastal area of the eastern Weddell Sea in December 2003. Microcalanus pygmaeus was by far the most abundant calanoid species. Metridia gerlachei, Ctenocalanus citer, Calanoides acutus, Calanus propinquus and the ice-associated Stephos longipes were also present in considerable proportions. The observed changes in the population characteristics and parameters of these species are described in detail and discussed in the context of the spring phytoplankton bloom. A conspicuous event occurring during the final stage of the study was the development of a strong storm. While the results suggest that this storm did not have any considerable influence on the populations of all other investigated copepod species, it very likely caused pronounced changes in the S. longipes population present in the water column. Before the storm, S. longipes was found primarily in the upper 100 m of the water column, and its population was dominated by adults (mean proportion = 41%) and the copepodite stage I (mean proportion = 30%). After the storm, the abundance increased considerably, and the copepodite stage I contributed by far the largest proportion (53%) of the total population indicating that the early copepodite stages probably had been released from the sea ice into the under ice water layer due to ice break-up and ice melt processes caused by the storm.

Multinet opening: 0.25 m²

Supplement to: Michels, Jan; Schnack-Schiel, Sigrid B; Pasternak, Anna F; Mizdalski, Elke; Isla, Enrique; Gerdes, Dieter (2012): Abundance, population structure and vertical distribution of dominant calanoid copepods on the eastern Weddell Sea shelf during a spring phytoplankton bloom. Polar Biology, 35(3), 369-386

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.754015
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-011-1083-1
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.880331
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.754015
Provenance
Creator Michels, Jan; Schnack-Schiel, Sigrid B; Pasternak, Anna F ORCID logo; Mizdalski, Elke; Isla, Enrique ORCID logo; Gerdes, Dieter
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2012
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 6650 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-19.506W, -72.829S, -10.715E, -70.804N); Weddell Sea
Temporal Coverage Begin 2003-12-09T21:35:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2004-01-01T21:59:00Z