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Zooplankton plays a major role in ocean food webs and biogeochemical cycles, and provides major ecosystem services as a main driver of the biological carbon pump and in sustaining fish communities. Zooplankton is also sensitive to its environment and reacts to its changes. To better understand the importance of zooplankton, and to inform prognostic models that try to represent them, spatially-resolved biomass estimates of key plankton taxa are desirable. In this study we predict, for the first time, the global biomass distribution of 19 zooplankton taxa (1-50 mm Equivalent Spherical Diameter) using observations with the Underwater Vision Profiler 5, a quantitative in situ imaging instrument. After classification of 466,872 organisms from more than 3,549 profiles (0-500 m) obtained between 2008 and 2019 throughout the globe, we estimated their individual biovolumes and converted them to biomass using taxa-specific conversion factors. We then associated these biomass estimates with climatologies of environmental variables (temperature, salinity, oxygen, etc.), to build habitat models using boosted regression trees. The results reveal maximal zooplankton biomass values around 60°N and 55°S as well as minimal values around the oceanic gyres. An increased zooplankton biomass is also predicted for the equator. Global integrated biomass (0-500 m) was estimated at 0.403 PgC. It was largely dominated by Copepoda (35.7%, mostly in polar regions), followed by Eumalacostraca (26.6%) Rhizaria (16.4%, mostly in the intertropical convergence zone). The machine learning approach used here is sensitive to the size of the training set and generates reliable predictions for abundant groups such as Copepoda (R2 ≈ 20-66%) but not for rare ones (Ctenophora, Cnidaria, R2 < 5%). Still, this study offers a first protocol to estimate global, spatially resolved zooplankton biomass and community composition from in situ imaging observations of individual organisms. The underlying dataset covers a period of 10 years while approaches that rely on net samples utilized datasets gathered since the 1960s. Increased use of digital imaging approaches should enable us to obtain zooplankton biomass distribution estimates at basin to global scales in shorter time frames in the future. 

Community- and “species”-level analyses elucidate ecological impacts and roles of marine RNA viruses. 

Oceans are brimming with life invisible to our eyes, a myriad of species of bacteria, viruses and other microscopic organisms essential for the health of the planet. These ‘marine plankton’ are unable to swim against currents and should therefore be constantly on the move, yet previous studies have suggested that distinct species of plankton may in fact inhabit different oceanic regions. However, proving this theory has been challenging; collecting plankton is logistically difficult, and it is often impossible to distinguish between species simply by examining them under a microscope. However, within the last decade, a research schooner called Tara has travelled the globe to gather thousands of plankton samples. At the same time, advances in genomics have made it possible to identify species based only on fragments of their DNA sequence. To understand the hidden geography of plankton communities in Earth’s oceans, Richter et al. pored over DNA from the Tara Oceans expedition. This revealed that, despite being unable to resist the flow of water, various planktonic species which live close to the surface manage to occupy distinct, stable provinces shaped by currents. Different sizes of plankton are distributed in different sized provinces, with the smallest organisms tending to inhabit the smallest areas. Comparing DNA similarities and speeds of currents at the ocean surface revealed how these might stretch and mix plankton communities. Plankton play a critical role in the health of the ocean and the chemical cycles of planet Earth. These results could allow deeper investigation by marine modellers, ecologists, and evolutionary biologists. Meanwhile, work is already underway to investigate how climate change might impact this hidden geography. 

Functional traits are increasingly used to assess changes in phytoplankton community structure and to link individual characteristics to ecosystem functioning. However, they are usually inferred from taxonomic identification or manually measured for each organism, both time consuming approaches. Instead, we focus on high throughput imaging to describe the main temporal variations of morphological changes of phytoplankton in Narragansett Bay, a coastal time‐series station. We analyzed a 2‐yr dataset of morphological features automatically extracted from continuous imaging of individual phytoplankton images (~ 105 million images collected by an Imaging FlowCytobot). We identified synthetic morphological traits using multivariate analysis and revealed that morphological variations were mainly due to changes in length, width, shape regularity, and chain structure. Morphological changes were especially important in winter with successive peaks of larger cells with increasing complexity and chains more clearly connected. Small nanophytoplankton were present year‐round and constituted the base of the community, especially apparent during the transitions between diatom blooms. High inter‐annual variability was also observed. On a weekly timescale, increases in light were associated with more clearly connected chains while more complex shapes occurred at lower nitrogen concentrations. On an hourly timescale, temperature was the determinant variable constraining cell morphology, with a general negative influence on length and a positive one on width, shape regularity, and chain structure. These first insights into the phytoplankton morphology of Narragansett Bay highlight the possible morphological traits driving the phytoplankton succession in response to light, temperature, and nutrient changes.

 

Abstract. Marine particles of different nature are found throughout the globalocean. The term “marine particles” describes detritus aggregates andfecal pellets as well as bacterioplankton, phytoplankton, zooplankton andnekton. Here, we present a global particle size distribution datasetobtained with several Underwater Vision Profiler 5 (UVP5) camerasystems. Overall, within the 64 µm to about 50 mm size range coveredby the UVP5, detrital particles are the most abundant component of allmarine particles; thus, measurements of theparticle size distribution with the UVP5 can yield importantinformation on detrital particle dynamics. During deployment, which ispossible down to 6000 m depth, the UVP5 images a volume of about 1 Lat a frequency of 6 to 20 Hz. Each image is segmented in real time, andsize measurements of particles are automatically stored. All UVP5units used to generate the dataset presented here wereinter-calibrated using a UVP5 high-definition unit as reference. Ourconsistent particle size distribution dataset contains 8805 verticalprofiles collected between 19 June 2008 and 23 November 2020. All major ocean basins, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic Sea, were sampled. A total of 19 % of all profiles had a maximum sampling depth shallower than 200 dbar, 38 % sampled at least the upper 1000 dbar depth range and 11 % went down to at least 3000 dbar depth. First analysis of the particle size distribution dataset shows that particle abundance is found to be high at high latitudes and in coastal areas where surface productivity or continental inputs are elevated. The lowest values are found in the deep ocean and in the oceanic gyres. Our dataset should be valuable for more in-depth studies that focus on the analysis of regional, temporal and global patterns of particle size distribution and flux as well as for the development and adjustment of regional and global biogeochemical models. The marine particle size distribution dataset (Kiko et al., 2021) is available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.924375. 

Viruses of two candidate phyla are abundant in the ocean and revise our understanding of early RNA virus evolution. 

Abstract. We assessed the influence of the marine diazotrophic cyanobacterium Trichodesmium on the bio-optical properties of western tropical South Pacific (WTSP) waters (18–22°S, 160°E–160°W) during the February–March 2015 OUTPACE cruise. We performed measurements of backscattering and absorption coefficients, irradiance, and radiance in the euphotic zone with a Satlantic MicroPro free-fall profiler and took Underwater Vision Profiler 5 (UPV5) pictures for counting the largest Trichodesmium spp. colonies. Pigment concentrations were determined by fluorimetry and high-performance liquid chromatography and picoplankton abundance by flow cytometry. Trichome concentration was estimated from pigment algorithms and validated by surface visual counts. The abundance of large colonies counted by the UVP5 (maximum 7093coloniesm⁻³) was well correlated to the trichome concentrations (maximum 2093trichomesL⁻¹) with an aggregation factor of 600. In the Melanesian archipelago, a maximum of 4715trichomesL⁻¹ was enumerated in pump samples (3.2m) at 20°S,16730°E. High Trichodesmium abundance was always associated with absorption peaks of mycosporine-like amino acids (330, 360nm) and high particulate backscattering, but not with high Chl a fluorescence or blue particulate absorption (440nm). Along the west-to-east transect, Trichodesmium together with Prochlorococcus represented the major part of total chlorophyll concentration; the contribution of other groups were relatively small or negligible. The Trichodesmium contribution to total chlorophyll concentration was the highest in the Melanesian archipelago around New Caledonia and Vanuatu (60%), progressively decreased to the vicinity of the islands of Fiji (30%), and reached a minimum in the South Pacific Gyre where Prochlorococcus dominated chlorophyll concentration. The contribution of Trichodesmium to zeaxanthin was respectively 50, 40 and 20% for these regions. During the OUTPACE cruise, the relationship between normalized water-leaving radiance (nL_w) in the ultraviolet and visible and chlorophyll concentration was similar to that found during the BIOSOPE cruise in the eastern tropical Pacific. Principal component analysis (PCA) of OUTPACE data showed that nL_w at 305, 325, 340, 380, 412 and 440nm was strongly correlated to chlorophyll and zeaxanthin, while nL_w at 490 and 565nm exhibited lower correlations. These results, as well as differences in the PCA of BIOSOPE data, indicated that nL_w variability in the greenish blue and yellowish green during OUTPACE was influenced by other variables associated with Trichodesmium presence, such as backscattering coefficient, phycoerythrin fluorescence and/or zeaxanthin absorption, suggesting that Trichodesmium detection should involve examination of nL_w in this spectral domain.