Taxonomical and functional diversity in zooplankton communities from boreal and arctic waters

Polish Academy of Sciences, Sopot, Poland
Faculty of Biology, Department of Vertebrate Ecology and Zoology, University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26602v1
Subject Areas
Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Marine Biology, Biological Oceanography
Keywords
Arctic, Biodiversity, Functional traits, Zooplankton
Copyright
© 2018 Głuchowska 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
Głuchowska M, Trudnowska E, Kwasniewski S. 2018. Taxonomical and functional diversity in zooplankton communities from boreal and arctic waters. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26602v1

Abstract

The advection of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic influences not only the thermal and sea ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean and the adjacent seas but also the Arctic marine biota. Earlier efforts to characterize the response of zooplankton communities to the increasing influence of warm AW were focused mostly on changes in taxonomic diversity and community structure, but how the zooplankton functional role will evolve under future global warming scenarios remains largely unknown. Based on the zooplankton collection gathered along a thermal gradient from temperate to Arctic marine domains (76-79°N) and an extensive functional trait matrix, we assessed the zooplankton taxonomical and functional structure and diversity under different temperature regimes. The results suggest that the temperature effects zooplankton community structure, taking into account not only the taxonomic, but also functional features. The findings can be used in predicting changes in the pelagic realm in the warming Arctic Ocean, and in constructing and tuning plankton components of ecosystem models.

Author Comment

This is an abstract which has been accepted for the WCMB.

The study was supported by Norway through the Norwegian Financial Mechanism (DWARF, grant number: PNRF-234-AI-1/07) and it was completed thanks to funding provided by the National Science Centre, Poland (grant number Pol-Nor/201992/93/2014).