Plankton play a key role in oceanic carbon flux as the primary biological mechanism for the sequestration of carbon out of the atmosphere into surface waters. The transfer of energy between phytoplankton and zooplankton can be inferred from regular patterns in population size structure, where plots of abundance within size classes typically show a power-law dependence on size. Here we analyze s...

Contents 1. Introduction 2. The pelagic food web 2.1 The structure of the pelagic food web. 2.2 Phytoplankton community structure. 2.2.1 Bottom up determinants of phytoplankton size structure. 2.2.2 Top-down determinants of phytoplankton size structure. 2.3 Zooplankton of marine pelagic food webs 2.3.1 Protozoa. 2.3.2 Copepoda. 2.3.3 Tunicata. 2.3.4 Mesozooplankton feeding selectivity. 2.3.5 He...

Abstract Although zooplankton play a substantial role in the biological carbon pump and serve as crucial link between primary producers higher trophic level consumers, skillful representation of is not often focus ocean biogeochemical models. Systematic evaluations models could improve their representation, but so far, skill assessment Earth system model (ESM) ensembles have included zooplankto...

Our current knowledge on the microbial component of zooplankton diet is limited, and it is generally assumed that bacteria-sized prey is not directly consumed by most mesozooplankton grazers in the marine food webs. We questioned this assumption and conducted field and laboratory studies to examine picocyanobacteria contribution to the diets of Baltic Sea zooplankton, including copepods. First,...

Copepod fecal pellets are often degraded at high rates within the upper part of the water column. However, the identity of the degraders and the processes governing the degradation remain unresolved. To identify the pellet degraders we collected water from Øresund (Denmark) approximately every second month from July 2004 to July 2005. These water samples were divided into 5 fractions (<0.2, <2,...

In a recent paper in the journal, Calbet (2001) describes the analysis of data on primary production and mesozoo-plankton grazing from a wide variety of marine ecosystems. The somewhat surprising result of Calbet's analysis is that, ''The slope of the log-log relationship between ingestion rates and PP was significantly Ͻ1, indicating a decline of relative importance of mesozooplankton grazing ...

Abstract Survival of larval Antarctic krill ( Euphausia superba ) during winter is largely dependent upon the presence sea ice as it provides an important source food and shelter. We hypothesized that additional benefits because hosts fewer competitors reduced predation risk for larvae than water column. To test our hypothesis, zooplankton were sampled in Weddell-Scotia Confluence Zone at ice-w...