Plankton community diversity from bacteria to copepods in bloom and non-bloom conditions in the Celtic Sea in spring

Feeding rates and prey selectivity of planktonic decapod larvae in the Western English Channel

“…These findings are in line with those of Anger (1990) who reported that early crab zoeae may ingest up to ca 40 % body C and provide further evidence of a trophic link between the microbial loop and decapod larvae Sulkin et al 1998). While there can be a degree of uncertainty associated with applying carbon to volume conversion factors to estimates of plankton abundance (Montagnes et al 1994), our estimates of prey biomass and fall within the ranges reported for coastal waters of the English Channel (Irigoien et al 2000a;Fileman et al 2010Fileman et al , 2011 and when compared with chlorophyll concentrations provide realistic C:chl ratios of between 30 and 70 (Irigoien et al 2000b). These food sources, while important, likely only represent part of the total ingestion by decapod larvae.…”

Diet of sardine Sardina pilchardus: an ‘end-to-end’ field study

“…Only a few field studies have analyzed the different components of the whole plankton assemblage, from bacteria to mesozooplankton, and further related the components to abiotic variables (Isari et al 2007, Fileman et al 2011. Furthermore, no such study has included higher trophic levels (fish).…”

Marine aloricate ciliate red tides in a temperate Irish sea lough

“…Given that Garcia-Cuetos et al (2012) split Mesodinium rubrum into two red species (of different sizes) and several non-red species, it is not clear whether past records refer to intraspecific spatiotemporal variation, interspecific variation, or both. Large-and small-celled ciliates are known to coexist equally or to predominate sequentially (Taylor et al 1971;Montagnes and Lynn 1989;Leakey et al 1993;Montagnes et al 1999;Fileman et al 2011). Our observations of the Lough Hyne samples indicated that most of the Mesodinium ciliates were similar in size and, thus, presumably formed a monospecific bloom.…”

“…Numerous studies have reported marked variation in cell size (diameter and/or volume) during the bloom season (Lindholm 1985;Montagnes and Lynn 1989;Crawford 1993;Montagnes et al 1999;Fileman et al 2011). Given that Garcia-Cuetos et al (2012) split Mesodinium rubrum into two red species (of different sizes) and several non-red species, it is not clear whether past records refer to intraspecific spatiotemporal variation, interspecific variation, or both.…”

“…In 2002, at the end of summer, ciliate blooms of Mesodinium produced surface-water discolouration off counties Dublin and Waterford (O'Boyle and Silke 2010). There have been offshore reports of Mesodinium (as Myrionecta rubra), however, from the Irish Sea (between Northern Ireland and the UK) by Montagnes et al (1999) and the Great Sole Bank in the Celtic Sea (south of Ireland; Fileman et al 2011). The extreme fragility and small size of Mesodinium (15-70 μm long, depending on species), as well as its extensive vertical migrations (Smith and Barber 1979;Soulsby et al 1984;Lindholm 1985), likely contribute to the under-sampling of Mesodinium in 'conventional' plankton studies in Ireland.…”