In situ diet of the copepod Calanus sinicus in coastal waters of the South Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea
- PDF / 352,725 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595 x 842 pts (A4) Page_size
- 39 Downloads / 224 Views
In situ diet of the copepod Calanus sinicus in coastal waters of the South Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea YI Xiaoyan1, 2†, HUANG Yousong1, 2†, ZHUANG Yunyun1, 2, CHEN Hongju1, 2, YANG Feifei2, WANG Weimin2, XU Donghui2, LIU Guangxing1, 2*, ZHANG Huan1, 3 1 Key Laboratory of Marine Environment and Ecology (Ocean University of China), Ministry of Education, Qingdao
266100, China 2 College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China 3 Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton 06340, USA
Received 21 March 2016; accepted 2 August 2016 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2017
Abstract
Copepods are a key trophic link between primary producers and predatory animals at higher trophic levels in the marine ecosystem. Knowledge of the in situ composition of the copepod diet is critical for the accurate evaluation of trophic relationships and energy transfer in marine food webs. In this study, we applied a PCR-based cloning technique developed previously to investigate the in situ diet of Calanus sinicus, an ecologically important largesized calanoid copepod that dominates in the shelf waters around China, Japan and Korea. Analyses of the 18S rDNA sequences obtained from the copepod diet revealed the diverse food composition of C. sinicus from two stations (Y19 in the South Yellow Sea and B49 in the Bohai Sea). A total of 43 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were detected, which belonged to 13 diverse lineages: Bacillariophyta, Dinoflagellata, Dictyochophyceae, Chrysophyta, Katablepharidophyta, Pelagophyceae, Apusozoa, Hydrozoa, Ctenophora, Echinodermata, Tunicata, Chaetognatha and marine fungi. The results indicate that during an algae bloom, C. sinicus can graze on the bloom causative species. When the abundance of phytoplankton in ambient water is relatively low, C. sinicus can choose eggs, larvae, or organic particles/detritus of various metazoans, especially hydrozoans and ctenophores, as alternative food sources. Our result suggests that C. sinicus is an omnivorous species, and its prey choice may depend on the food availability in the ambient waters. Key words: copepod, in situ diet, molecular analysis, 18S rDNA, ciliate blocking primer Citation: Yi Xiaoyan, Huang Yousong, Zhuang Yunyun, Chen Hongju, Yang Feifei, Wang Weimin, Xu Donghui, Liu Guangxing, Zhang Huan. 2017. In situ diet of the copepod Calanus sinicus in coastal waters of the South Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 36(6): 68–79, doi: 10.1007/s13131-017-0974-6
1 Introduction Copepods, especially the planktonic copepods such as those in the order Calanoida, are considered as the key trophic linkage between phytoplankton and higher trophic levels. The trophic relationship between copepods and other organisms has had a great impact on biogeochemical cycling and energy transfer in marine food webs (Ban et al., 1997; Calbet, 2008; Zöllner et al., 2009). To better understand the complexity of the copepod-based food chains, an accurate
Data Loading...
