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Gelatinous zooplankton of the Marshall Islands, Central Tropical Pacific: an inventory

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Abstract

Vast regions of the Central Pacific, inhabited by low-lying Micronesian nations, have been poorly studied for zooplankton. Atolls of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) have been surveyed before, during, and after the US nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1958, and gelatinous taxa were sporadically mentioned. Gelatinous zooplankton (GZ) were photographed during several thousand SCUBA dives between 2001 and 2016 at Kwajalein Atoll. Together with new recordings, the GZ species richness was reviewed for the entire RMI, which has the potential to become a model system for marine biodiversity research in data-poor Micronesia. Our survey resulted in 74, mostly holoplanktonic (74%), species, including nine hydrozoan medusae, 31 siphonophores, 14 scyphozoans, three cubozoans, three lobate ctenophores, eight appendicularians, one doliolid, and five salps. The species richness was low compared to census efforts from neighbouring Southeast Asian countries, hence being the first GZ assemblage characterisation for the broader oceanic region.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the contribution of several external experts in the process of species identification from underwater pictures. We also thank C. Sylvester, S. Jazwinski, and P. M. Sorongon-Yap for providing additional photos and literature, and wish to thank T. K. Kattil-De Brum, M. J. Miller, P. Pata, I. Straehler-Pohl, and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments made on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Funding

FL was supported by an IDF scholarship granted by the University of British Columbia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, 2039-2207 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Florian Lüskow & Evgeny A. Pakhomov

  2. Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Florian Lüskow & Evgeny A. Pakhomov

  3. PO Box 594, Goleta, CA, USA

    Scott Johnson & Jeanette Johnson

  4. Hakai Institute, P.O. Box 309, Heriot Bay, British Columbia, V0P 1H0, Canada

    Evgeny A. Pakhomov

Authors
  1. Florian Lüskow
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  2. Scott Johnson
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  4. Evgeny A. Pakhomov
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Correspondence to Florian Lüskow.

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No animal testing was performed during this study.

Sampling and field studies

All necessary permits for sampling and observational field studies have been obtained by the authors from the competent authorities.

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All data used to create Fig. 2 can be accessed in the Supplementary Material.

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SJ and JJ collected the footage; FL and SJ wrote the manuscript; EAP edited the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Lüskow, F., Johnson, S., Johnson, J. et al. Gelatinous zooplankton of the Marshall Islands, Central Tropical Pacific: an inventory. Mar. Biodivers. 51, 56 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-021-01205-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-021-01205-9

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