Feeding behavior of large calanoid copepods Neocalanus cristatus and N. plumchrus from the subarctic Pacific Ocean

Abstract

Oceanic waters of the subarctic Pacific exhibit a special ecological feature, a virtually seasonally invariant standing stock of phytoplankton (measured as chlorophyll a), that seems to reflect a balance, at least during spring and summer, between phytoplankton growth and zooplankton grazing. The grazers presumed to be responsible for the balance are the calanoid copepods Neocalanus cristatus and N. plumchrus. Shipboard grazing experiments, utilizing both natural suspended particulate material and cultured phytoplankton as food for the copepods, showed that both species have at least three attributes of feeding behavior required to maintain steady standing stock of phytoplankton. That is, the Neocalanus species can feed at the low concentrations of phytoplankton that prevail in the open subarctic Pacific, they feed at similar rates on a broad range of particlessizes including the predominant particles, and they respond to small increases in phytoplankton concentration by proportionately larger increases in their feeding rate. Although both species of Neocalanus attain larger body sizes than co-occurring Calanus pacificus and Pseudocalanus sp., they have morphological specializations that seem to account for their unexpected ability to feed on very dilute suspensions of small phytoplankton cells. It appears that the perpetually low phytoplankton concentrations in the open subarctic Pacific do not permit maximum feeding effort by the species of Neocalanus.