Patchiness and composition of coral reef demersal zooplankton

Zooplankton samples were collected weekly for a full year withdemersal traps on a coral reef off the west coast of Barbados.There was a marked temporal variability in weekly catches bothin terms of abundance and biomass. Patchiness occurred at allsampling frequencies from 2 to 26 weeks, but spectral analysisindicated a variance shift at a frequency of 8–10 weeksAggregations of the two most abundant taxa, the copepoditesand the microzooplankton, occurred at 8–12 week intervalsand significant differences in abundance and biomass were foundbetween mean bimonthly zooplankton catches Lagged cross-correlationsat 7 and 11 weeks between chlorophyll and microzooplankton andcopepodites suggest that aggregations are connected to cyclesof primary production. There was a negative correlation betweenzooplankton abundance and surface water salinity in 8 of 16taxa Copepods were the most abundant taxon overall. Microzooplanktonand copepodites comprised 96% of the abundance and 66% of thebiomass Decreases in taxonomic richness and in diversity wereassociated with patchiness of small-sized copepodites and microzooplankton,suggesting that composition was altered and stability temporarilylessened during peaks of abundance