The importance of protozooplankton as prey for copepods in the coastal areas of the central Irish Sea

This study evaluates food supply for copepods, highlighting the trophic relationship between copepods and protozooplankton. To test the hypotheses that protozooplankton prey are capable of sustaining the copepod standing stock in the western Irish Sea, the taxonomic and size composition of these two groups and the size-specific predation of copepods on protozooplankton were investigated. Protozooplankton and copepod samples were collected off the southwest coast of the Isle of Man using 1.7 l Niskin water bottles and two nets (64 and 280 μm meshes), respectively. Copepod predation on protozooplankton was calculated using weight-specific clearance rates from the literature, considering the availability of prey that was accessible to a given size of copepod. Low protozooplankton biomass was dominated by small cells (<60 μm), and high copepod biomass was dominated by small species, which were more efficiently collected by a 64-μm mesh net. However, large copepods were only collected by a 280-μm mesh net, suggesting that the combination of the two nets provided a better estimate of copepod biomass. Predation by the copepod assemblage in the Irish Sea removed 1–47% and 0.5–22% of ciliates and dinoflagellates standing stock, respectively, resulting in 1–40% of the copepod feeding requirement per day. Contrary to our hypothesis, copepods could not meet their feeding requirements by grazing only on the microzooplankton prey (15–200 μm), and other food sources (i.e. nanoplankton) must be important additional dietary components to copepods in the Irish Sea. Handling editor: S. M. Thomaz