Environmental conditions drive zooplankton community structure in the epipelagic oceanic water of the southern Gulf of Mexico: A molecular approach

Abstract

Zooplankton form some of the most abundant and diverse biological communities in aquatic environments and constitute an integral component of both marine and freshwater ecosystems (Bucklin et al., 2016;Djurhuus et al., 2018;Xiong et al., 2019). Estimating the richness of zooplankton species remains a priority in several fields of research, from ecology to conservation biology (Carugati et al., 2015;Gaston, 2009). Such studies are particularly important in marine ecosystems where ecological processes are often maintained by both complex biotic interactions and environmental drivers (Palumbi

Biotic assemblages of gelatinous zooplankton in the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent waters: An evolutionary biogeographic approach

“…Node (2) can be interpreted as the interaction of biotas transported from the Caribbean into the GoMx by the Loop Current, which remains confined to the southwest oceanic zone due to mesoscale oceanographic processes [ 17 , 52 , 60 , 61 ]. The southern GoMx has been regionalized using different approaches, e.g., considering its ecological or physicochemical characteristics [ 62 ]; however, these proposals do not agree with the Southern Oceanic area proposed here and in other studies [e.g., 24 , 62 ]. The idea that the oceanic southern GoMx is biologically more homogeneous than the northern region [ 14 , 62 ] is supported in this study.…”

DNA metabarcoding reveals impact of local recruitment, dispersal, and hydroperiod on assembly of a zooplankton metacommunity

“…These bulk tissue samples were either taken directly from the open water of ponds or resulted from hatching experiments on resting stages from sediment. We used a two‐fragment DNA metabarcoding approach (COI and 18S) which significantly improved species recognition by offsetting some of the errors that may have occurred due to incompleteness of reference databases, but potentially also due to primer bias, that is, biased amplification successes among different taxonomic groups (Cicala et al, 2021; Clarke et al, 2017; Leite et al, 2021; Stefanni et al, 2018; Zhang et al, 2018). Indeed, without the use of two markers, a fair proportion of species (41.5%) in our kettle holes would have remained undetected, potentially reducing the power of our biodiversity assessment.…”

Metabarcoding of zooplankton communities of Dianchi Lake based on the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 gene

“…Ecology and conservation biology continue to place a strong emphasis on understanding zooplankton diversity ( Carugati et al, 2015 ). These studies are particularly important for aquatic ecosystems because of the complex biotic interactions and environmental drivers of their ecological processes ( Steinberg and Landry, 2017 ; Cicala et al, 2022 ). Zooplankton are extremely vulnerable to environmental changes due to their small size and low ability to self-dispersal ( Yang and Zhang, 2020 ).…”

“…As a result, they are useful bioindicators for determining the health of marine ecosystems. The geographic and temporal abundance and taxonomic composition of zooplankton communities are strongly influenced by both environmental changes and biological processes ( Cicala et al, 2022 ). These changes can negatively affect zooplankton biodiversity, which could have an impact on ecosystem services that could have economic implications ( Everaert et al, 2018 ).…”