Abstract
The present work is aimed at discovering the diversity and abundance of copepods in the zooplankton community on the north coast of Angola, during the hot season 2014-2016. The samples were collected during the research cruise on board the Norwegian research ship “Dr. Fridtjof Nansen” in February - March on the Congo River and Luanda monitoring lines. Zooplankton sampling was performed using a multinet net in an oblique trawl (2014) and a WP2 net in a vertical trawl (2015 and 2016), both with 180 µm mesh. The samples were fixed in 4% formaldehyde and analyzed in the oceanography laboratory of the National Institute of Fisheries and Maritime Research in Angola. In the three years of sampling, copepods were present in the zooplankton community. The diversity of copepods on the northern Angolan coast, from 2014 to 2016 in the hot season, included 27 genera corresponding to 19 families. The Copepoda class was the most abundant group in the zooplankton community, corresponding to more than 80% of the abundance, having been represented by the orders Calanoida, Cyclopoida and Harpacticoida.
Highlights
Zooplankton corresponds to the set of heterotrophic planktonic organisms, belonging to several groups in the animal kingdom, comprising an immensity of organisms of different shapes and dimensions, uni- and multicellular [1]
As most copepods feed on phytoplankton, they are the main link between phytoplankton and the upper trophic levels of the marine food chain and an important part of the diet of many marine animals is composed of copepods [8; 9]
The main purpose of the work was to study the composition of copepods within the zooplankton community on the north coast of Angola during the hot season (February – March) 2014–2016
Summary
Zooplankton corresponds to the set of heterotrophic planktonic organisms, belonging to several groups in the animal kingdom, comprising an immensity of organisms of different shapes and dimensions, uni- and multicellular [1]. Crustaceans are generally the dominant group in zooplankton communities [3,4,5], and among them copepods predominate. 2020;28(3):285292 dant member of the marine plankton [1; 6; 7], and the dominant holoplanktonic form corresponding to about 90–97% of zooplanktonic biomass. There are many freshwater species and others in soil water films. There are many parasitic species of various marine and freshwater animals, fish [8]. As most copepods feed on phytoplankton, they are the main link between phytoplankton and the upper trophic levels of the marine food chain and an important part of the diet of many marine animals is composed of copepods [8; 9]
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