Pubblicazione scientifica

Small copepods could channel missing carbon through metazoan predation

FILONE TECNOLOGICO	TEMA
economia circolare e sostenibilità
produzione e cattura
produzione e raccolta

RIASSUNTO

Abstract

Global ecosystem models are essential tools for predicting climate change impacts on marine systems. Modeled biogenic carbon fluxes in the ocean often match measured data poorly and part of this could be because small copepods (<2 mm) are modeled as unicellular feeders grazing on phytoplankton and microzooplankton. The most abundant copepods from a seasonal upwelling region of the Eastern North Atlantic were sorted, and a molecular method was applied to copepod gut contents to evaluate the extent of metazoan predation under two oceanographic conditions, a trophic pathway not accounted for in global models. Scaling up the results obtained herein, based on published field and laboratory estimates, suggests that small copepods could ingest 1.79–27.20 gigatons C/year globally. This ignored metazoan‐copepod link could increase current estimates of biogeochemical fluxes (remineralization, respiration, and the biological pump) and export to higher trophic levels by 15.6%–24.4%. It could also account for global discrepancies between measured daily ingestion and copepod metabolic demand/growth. The inclusion of metazoan predation into global models could provide a more realistic role of the copepods in the ocean and if these preliminary data hold true at larger sample sizes and scales, the implications would be substantial at the global scale.

DATA

Data di pubblicazione: 30/10/2018

AUTORI

ROURA ALVARO
STRUGNELL JAN M
GUERRA ANGEL
GONZALEZ ANGEL F
RICHARDSON ANTHONY J

ENTE DI AFFERENZA

DEPARTAMENTO DE ECOLOGIA Y RECURSOS MARINOS INST INVESTIGACIONES MARINAS IIM CSIC VIGO SPAIN
CTR SUSTAINABLE TROPICAL FISHERIES & AQUACULTURE JAMES COOK UNIV TOWNSVILLE QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA
CTR APPLICATIONS IN NATURAL RESOURCE MATHEMATICS SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS & PHYSICS UNIV QUEENSLAND ST LUCIA QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA
CSIRO OCEANS & ATMOSPHERE QUEENSLAND BIOSCIENCES PRECINCT ST LUCIA QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA

RIVISTA

Ecology and Evolution, 8(22), 10868-10878

IMPACT FACTOR

2,540

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