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Plasticity in dormancy behaviour of Calanoides acutus in Antarctic coastal waters

Biggs, Tristan E.G.; Brussaard, Corina P.D.; Evans, Claire ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0569-7057; Venables, Hugh J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6445-8462; Pond, David W.. 2020 Plasticity in dormancy behaviour of Calanoides acutus in Antarctic coastal waters. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 77 (5). 1738-1751. 10.1093/icesjms/fsaa042

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Abstract/Summary

Copepods that enter dormancy, such as Calanoides acutus, are key primary consumers in Southern Ocean food webs where they convert a portion of the seasonal phytoplankton biomass into a longer-term energetic and physiological resource as wax ester (WE) reserves. We studied the seasonal abundance and lipid profiles of pre-adult and adult C. acutus in relation to phytoplankton dynamics on the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Initiation of dormancy occurred when WE unsaturation was relatively high, and chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentrations, predominantly attributable to diatoms, were reducing. Declines in WE unsaturation during the winter may act as a dormancy timing mechanism with increased Chl a concentrations likely to promote sedimentation that results in a teleconnection between the surface and deep water inducing ascent. A late summer diatom bloom was linked to early dormancy termination of females and a second spawning event. The frequency and duration of high biomass phytoplankton blooms may have consequences for the lifespan of the iteroparous C. acutus females (either 1 or 2 years) if limited by a total of two main spawning events. Late summer recruits, generated by a second spawning event, likely benefitted from lower predation and high phytoplankton food availability. The flexibility of copepods to modulate their life-cycle strategy in response to bottom-up and top-down conditions enables individuals to optimize their probability of reproductive success in the very variable environment prevalent in the Southern Ocean.

Item Type: Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1093/icesjms/fsaa042
ISSN: 1054-3139
Additional Keywords: copepod, dormancy, life cycle, lipids, phytoplankton, wax ester unsaturation
Date made live: 07 Apr 2020 17:26 +0 (UTC)
URI: https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/527438

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