Comparison of the chemical composition of particulate material and copepod faecal pellets at stations off the coast of Labrador and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence

Abstract

Faecal pellets were collected in 1988 from copepods which had fed in situ or in laboratory experiments, using screened natural seawater as food, at two stations off the coast of Labrador and one in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The chemical composition of the pellets and of particulate material in profiles and in laboratory food were measured in terms of particulate carbon, carbohydrate (soluble and insoluble), protein and lipid. Faecal pellet composition was somewhat similar in all experiments at the first two stations, where the compositions of particulate material in situ and copepod species assemblages were also similar. At the third station the compositions of faecal pellets and particulate material were slightly different from those at the other stations and the copepod species composition varied between sampling times. Faecal pellets at the first two stations had very low levels of soluble carbohydrate, while concentrations in the food were generally high, suggesting that it was efficiently metabolized by copepods, although it might have been absent because of ‘sloppy feeding’ or release, after passage through the gut, in soluble form or from faecal pellets. Comparisons of POC: biogenic silica ratios in food and faecal pellets, calculated using data presented elsewhere (Head 1992; Mar. Biol. 112: 583–592), suggested that at these stations, where food concentrations were high (chlorophyll concentrations>8 μgl-1), copepods may have been assimilating carbon rather inefficiently.