Abstract
Respiration (=oxygen consumption) rates of 28 zooplankton species belonging to 10 taxa from 500 to 5,000 m depth of the western subarctic Pacific Ocean were determined as 0.027–0.44 μLO2 mg dry mass−1 h−1 at in situ temperatures (1.5–3 °C), which are 80 % lower than the rates of the epipelagic Antarctic zooplankton with similar body mass and at a comparable temperature. In terms of adjusted metabolic rate to 1 mg body N (AMR; μLO2 mg N−0.8 h−1) at 1 °C, the present results (mean 1.66) fall well within the range (0.84–3.32) reported for copepods, chaetognaths, and mixed crustaceans from 500 to 7,000 m in the subarctic Pacific Ocean and Antarctic waters. Judging from their body C:N elemental ratios and ash-free dry mass (=organic matter) data, the major component of organic matter is deduced to be protein (C:N = 3.4–8.1, by mass) for 19 out of 28 species and lipids (C:N = 8.6–13.0) for the remaining 9 species.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments which improved the text. I thank A.D. McKinnon for reviewing earlier drafts of this paper, and H. Kaeriyama for the identification of ostracods. Thanks are due to the Captain, officers and crew members of the “T.S. Oshoro-Maru” for their help in field sampling, and H. Matsumoto and A. Maeda of the Center for Instrumental Analysis of Hokkaido University for CHN elemental analysis. Part of this study was supported by grant JSPS KAKENSHI 14209001.
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Ikeda, T. Metabolism and chemical composition of zooplankton from 500 to 5,000 m depth of the western subarctic Pacific Ocean. J Oceanogr 68, 641–649 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-012-0124-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-012-0124-x