Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001
| SS36 Dealing With Scales in Aquatic Ecology: Structure and Function in Aquatic Ecosystems (Spatial and Temporal Connections) |
| Date: Tuesday, February 13, 2001, Time: 11:15:00 AM |
| Location: San Miguel |
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| Donaghay, P, L, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI, USA, donaghay@gsosun1.gso.uri |
| Holliday, D, V, BAE Systems, San Diego, USA, holliday@tracor.com |
| Dekshenieks, M, M, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI, USA, |
| Sullivan, J, , University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI, USA, |
| Rines, J, E, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI, USA, |
| McGehee, D, , BAE Systems, San Diego, USA, |
| Greenlaw, C, , BAE Systems, San diego, USA, |
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| DO ZOOPLANKTON AGGREGATE INTO THIN PLANKTON LAYERS? |
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| Aquatic ecologists have long hypothesized that the formation of thin plankton layers could provide a concentrated food resource for vertically migrating higher trophic levels. As a first step toward testing this hypothesis, we used autonomous bottom-up profilers to simultaneously quantify currents and the vertical physical, biological, chemical, and optical structure over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Optical and acoustical profiles collected by this array showed that both phytoplankton and zooplankton can form highly concentrated layers that are less than a few meters thick, yet can extend for kilometers and persist for days. Analysis of diel changes in the accoustic data indicate that while vertically migrating zooplankton frequently aggregated into thin layers of potential prey, at other times they completely avoided such layers. Dramatic declines in abundance of thin layers of phytoplankton and zooplankton observed during periods of intense vertical migration strongly suggest that trophic interactions occurring on vertical scales of decimeters to a few meters may be critical to understanding zooplankton and phytoplankton dynamics on larger time and space scales.
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