Search results for "Pelagic zone"
showing 10 items of 124 documents
Diet-specific biomarkers show that high-quality phytoplankton fuels herbivorous zooplankton in large boreal lakes
2014
SUMMARY 1. The zooplankton is a key link in the transfer of energy from primary producers up through aquatic food webs. Previous efforts to quantify the importance of basal resources to aquatic consumers have used stable isotopes (SI) and simple ternary models, including only ‘bulk’ phytoplankton, bacteria or terrestrial particulate organic matter (t-POM). 2. We used a novel Bayesian mixing model based on fatty acids (FA) to quantify the dietary assimilation of seven basal resources, including five phytoplankton groups, pelagic bacteria and t-POM, to Cladocera in large boreal lakes in Finland. To account for trophic enrichment of FA from the diet to consumers, we parameterised the model wit…
Epiphytic bacteria make an important contribution to heterotrophic bacterial production in a humic boreal lake
2017
Bacterial production (BP) in lakes has generally only been measured in the pelagic zone without accounting for littoral BP, and studies of BP at the whole-lake scale are very scarce. In the dystrophic humic lakes, which are common throughout the boreal region, low light penetration through water has been assumed to seriously limit available habitats for littoral organisms. However, many highly humic boreal lakes have extensive partly submerged vegetation around the lake perimeter which can provide well-lit substrata for highly productive epiphyton. We measured epiphytic BP on the littoral vegetation and pelagic BP in a small highly humic boreal lake in Finland during an open-water season an…
Arctic sea ice algae differ markedly from phytoplankton in their ecophysiological characteristics
2021
Photophysiological and biochemical characteristics were investigated in natural communities of Arctic sea ice algae and phytoplankton to understand their respective responses towards variable irradiance and nutrient regimes. This study revealed large differences in photosynthetic efficiency and capacity between the 2 types of algal assemblages. Sea ice algal assemblages clearly displayed increased photoprotective energy dissipation under the highest daily average irradiance levels (>8 µmol photons m-2 s-1). In contrast, phytoplankton assemblages were generally light-limited within the same irradiance ranges. Furthermore, phytoplankton assemblages exhibited more efficient carbon assimilat…
A spatially explicit risk assessment approach: Cetaceans and marine traffic in the Pelagos Sanctuary (Mediterranean Sea).
2017
15 páginas, 5 figuras, 2 tablas.-- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Population and reproductive dynamics of the polychaete Pygospio elegans in a boreal estuary complex
2016
Pygospio elegans is an opportunistic, wide-spread spionid polychaete that reproduces asexually via fragmentation and can produce benthic and pelagic larvae, hence combining different developmental modes in one species. We documented the density, size distribution, and reproductive activity of P. elegans at four sites in the Danish Isefjord-Roskilde Fjord estuary complex, where all modes of reproduction were reported. We compared population dynamics of this species to environmental parameters such as salinity, temperature, and sediment characteristics (grain size, sorting, porosity, water content, organic content, C/N). We observed that new cohorts—resulting either from sexual or asexual rep…
Multispecies tracking reveals a major seabird hotspot in the North Atlantic
2021
The conservation of migratory marine species, including pelagic seabirds, is challenging because their movements span vast distances frequently beyond national jurisdictions. Here, we aim to identify important aggregations of seabirds in the North Atlantic to inform ongoing regional conservation efforts. Using tracking, phenology, and population data, we mapped the abundance and diversity of 21 seabird species. This revealed a major hotspot associated with a discrete area of the subpolar frontal zone, used annually by 2.9–5 million seabirds from ≥56 colonies in the Atlantic: the first time this magnitude of seabird concentrations has been documented in the high seas. The hotspot is temporal…
Dispersion of vendace eggs and larvae around potential nursery areas reveals their reproductive strategy
2019
Depending on their reproductive strategy, different fish species aim to aggregate or disperse eggs and larvae in their reproductive habitat. Many pelagic species disperse their eggs widely around the potential nursery areas. Larval dispersion or aggregation affects population sub‐structuring, which has important implications in fisheries management and conservation of the natural spatial diversity in populations. The dispersion of larval vendace (Coregonus albula) was quantified in two oligotrophic Finnish lakes, and effects of density and environmental variables on the inter‐annual variation in the larval distribution were examined by analysing spatial abundance data from the lakes from 19…
Nutritional quality of littoral macroinvertebrates and pelagic zooplankton in subarctic lakes
2021
Littoral benthic primary production is considered the most important energy source of consumers in subarctic lakes. We analyzed essential fatty acid (EFA) and amino acid (EAA) content of 23 littoral benthic macroinvertebrate taxa as well as cladocerans and copepods from pelagic and littoral habitats of 8–9 subarctic lakes to compare their nutritional quality. Pelagic crustacean zooplankton had significantly higher EFA and total FA content (on average 2.6‐fold and 1.6‐fold, respectively) than littoral macroinvertebrates in all our study lakes. Specifically, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), one of the most important EFA for juvenile fish, was almost exclusively found in pelagic copepods. In littor…
Communal pair spawning behaviour of vendace (Coregonus albula ) in the dark
2017
Mating in nature is rarely random, and most fish species have refined mating systems. The vendace (Coregonus albula) is a short-lived, small-sized, cold-water-adapted pelagic schooling species that is known to spawn in groups, but the actual mating system of this species, like many other group-spawning fishes, has not been described in detail. Vendace typically spawn in the littoral or sublittoral zones of lakes in late autumn, and the hatching of larvae occurs close to icebreak in the following spring. In our large study lake, vendace larvae were caught in 93% of 1,149 random sampling locations lake-wide. We examined the courtship and mating of vendace under experimental conditions by noni…
Small pelagic fish in the new millennium: A bottom-up view of global research effort
2021
The present review is an outcome of discussions at the ICES-PICES Symposium on Drivers of Dynamics of Small Pelagic Fish convened in Victoria, B.C., Canada in spring 2017.-- This review is a first contribution of a new international Working Group on Small Pelagic Fish started jointly by ICES (WGSPF) and PICES (WG43) to continue world-wide collaboration to advance knowledge on the drivers of populations of SPF.