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A one-month study of the zooplankton community at a fixed station in the Ligurian Sea: the potential impact of the species composition on the mineralization of organic matter

Abstract. The cruise project was designed to study temporal variations of the ecosystem during the summer-autumn transition and focused on the part played by zooplankton as top-down controllers, and the relative importance of top-down versus bottom-up controls. Zooplankton should play a key role both in the vertical transfer of particulate organic matter and in the mineralisation of organic matter. Although the importance of species diversity is well recognized, the impact of diversity on carbon fluxes is rarely considered. Trophic roles of zooplankton range from strict herbivory to strict carnivory, with all possible combinations (i.e. omnivory) between these two extremes. Feeding strategies are also very diverse, for example, active predators, passive filter feeders or suspension feeders co-exist (Bamstedt at al., 2000). As the metabolic cost of these different trophic roles and ways of feeding should be different, a physiological diversity must be considered in any assessment of the role of zooplankton in the flux of organic matter (e.g. Longhurts and Harrison, 1989). At a minimum,, species and functional diversities contribute to the diversity of exported organic matter (Steinberg et al., 2000; Madin et al., 2001). Fecal pellets, the organic matter egested by zooplankton, differ in form, size and weight, and hence in their sedimentation and degradation rates (Turner, 2002). The downward flux of organic matter thus depends on not only on physical and chemical processes but also on biological variables. The area sampled, located in the central part of the Ligurian Sea is next to the DYFAMED site, a time-series station monthly monitored for several years now. The zone is considered to be oligotrophic and protected from strong advective processes (Andersen and Prieur, 2000). The two cruises DYNAmic of the rapid PROCess (DYNAPROC 1 in May 1995 and DYNAPROC 2, the present study) were devoted to factors controlling the vertical flux of matter on short time scales. The aim of the work presented here was to estimate, at a fixed station in the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean Sea),the impact of zooplankton on organic matter fluxes. We determined the species composition and then for the dominant species of the community, we estimated rates of, oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide production and ammonium excretion. Our sampling period, the summer-autumn transition featuring strong wind events, offered contrasting situations for primary and export production (Marty et al., 2008). We thus have the opportunity to estimate how the zooplankton, from a species-specific point of view, react to these changes.