Title: Arctic zooplankton community structure and diversity: comparison of the North Water polynya, Beaufort and Laptev Seas
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Principal Investigators Louis Fortier, Gérald Darnis, Québec-Océan, Département de Biologie, Université Laval, Canada |
Project goals
High resolution taxonomy of the zooplankton collected during the ArcticNet 2007 and NABOS 2007 missions will support a community structure and biodiversity study of the mesozooplankton of the Laptev Sea, North Water polynya and southeastern Beaufort Sea..
Results
Over 100 depth-stratified samples were collected in the Canadian Arctic and Laptev Sea in 2007 and 2008 using a multi-net with 200 µm mesh. A sub-set of those were analyzed with the support of ArcOD funding. Preliminary analysis of part of the samples suggests that the mesozooplankton assemblages in the different regions of the Canadian Arctic is numerically dominated by the copepods Oithona similis, Oncaea borealis, Metridia longa, Microcalanus pygmaeus, Calanus glacialis, Pseudocalanus sp., and Calanus hyperboreus. No specimen of the Atlantic boreal species Calanus finmarchicus was found in the samples collected in the North Water polynya. The data set originating from the 2007 sampling in the Southeastern Beaufort Sea was the start of a seasonal time series over an annual cycle (2007-08) in the framework of the IPY-Circumpolar Flaw Lead (CFL) System Study. Data from 2002 sampling in the southeastern Beaufort Sea as part of the CASES study was also provided to ArcOD / OBIS.
