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Identifying zooplankton community changes between shallow and upper-mesophotic reefs on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Caribbean

, , , , , ,
1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
2 Operation Wallacea, Old Bolingbroke, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.2531v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science, Biodiversity, Ecology, Marine Biology
Keywords
mesophotic, MCE, Utila, Honduras, zooplankton, twilight zone, coral reef, light trap, Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, depth changes
Copyright
© 2016 Andradi-Brown et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Andradi-Brown DA, Head C, Exton DA, Hunt CL, Hendrix A, Gress E, Rogers AD. 2016. Identifying zooplankton community changes between shallow and upper-mesophotic reefs on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Caribbean. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2531v1

Abstract

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs, reefs 30 -150m) are understudied, yet the limited research conducted has been biased towards large sessile taxa, such as scleractinian corals and sponges, or mobile taxa such as fish. Here we investigate zooplankton communities on shallow reefs and MCEs around Utila, on the southern Mesoamerican Barrier Reef using planktonic light traps. Zooplankton samples were sorted into broad taxonomic groups. Our results indicate similar taxonomic zooplankton richness and overall biomass between shallow reefs and MCEs, but that abundance of larger bodied (>2 mm) zooplanktonic groups, including decapod crab zoea, mysid shrimps and peracarid crustaceans was higher on MCEs than shallow reefs. Our findings highlight the important of considering zooplankton when identifying broader reef community shifts across the shallow reef to MCE depth gradient.

Author Comment

This short manuscript considers differences in recorded zooplankton communities on shallow reefs (15 m) and mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs; 40 m) on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Caribbean. We plan to shortly submit this article for peer review, but this version is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.

Supplemental Information

Table S1: GPS coordinates of study sites

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2531v1/supp-1

Additional Information

Competing Interests

Operation Wallacea provided financial support in the form of salaries for authors DAAB, DAE, AH and EG, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Author Contributions

Dominic A Andradi-Brown conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables.

Catherine Head analyzed the data, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Dan A Exton conceived and designed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Christina L Hunt performed the experiments, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Alicia Hendrix performed the experiments, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Erika Gress performed the experiments, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Alex D Rogers conceived and designed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Animal Ethics

The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

This study was on zooplankton communities sampled on coral reefs in Honduras. This meant the primary study organisms were invertebrates, though by the nature of the sampling fish larvae were also collected. As the focus of the work was on invertebrates, and no higher vertebrates were involved, ethical review was not required for this work in Honduras.

Field Study Permissions

The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

Research permits for this work were issued to Operation Wallacea by the Instituto de Conservación Forestal (ICF), Honduras.

Data Deposition

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

Raw data and code will be uploaded as a supplementary file in a revised version of this manuscript prior to submission for peer review.

Funding

DAAB is funded by a Fisheries Society of the British Isles PhD studentship (www.fsbi.org.uk). Operation Wallacea (www.opwall.com) provided fieldwork support for DAAB, DAE, CLH, AH, EG and ADR. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Identifying zooplankton community changes between shallow and upper-mesophotic reefs on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Caribbean
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