Abstract
The evaluation of more than 10,000 samples of plankton, taken at standard stations from 1953 to 1960 in the Barents Sea, made it possible to supplement considerably the species list of medusae, siphonophores, and ctenophores, and to revise some ecological and biogeographical characteristics of many of them. Quantitative data, assembled over many years, on the occurrence of the above-mentioned groups, demonstrated the impossibility of using the vast majority of representatives of this fauna as biological indicators. During the very warm year of 1960, reproductively and vegetatively cold-adapted forms produced the same population increase as the thermophilic forms. The change in thermal conditions influenced these animals indirectly via a favourable biotic situation due to a prolongation of the nutrition period. The capability to vary the number of eggs, timing, rates and types of reproduction, to withstand long periods of starvation, etc., facilitates a flexible synchronization of the population dynamics of these pelagic predators with the quantity of plankton used for nutrition. The same properties stipulate the possibility of seasonal and annual meandering in regard to the boundaries of the water areas occupied.
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Communicated by M. E. Vinogradov, Moscow
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Zelickman, E.A. Distribution and ecology of the pelagic hydromedusae, siphonophores and ctenophores of the Barents Sea, based on perennial plankton collections. Marine Biology 17, 256–264 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00366301
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00366301