Effects of incorporating age-specific traits of zooplankton into a marine ecosystem model

摘要

Highlights?New formulation for incorporating age-specific traits of copepod is developed.?Unimodal copepod age structure is predicted when food selectivity is strong.?Copepod age-specific traits may have large impacts on marine nitrogen cycle.AbstractMorphological, physiological, behavioral, and life-history traits of zooplankton are vital when assessing their roles in marine ecosystem. A recent study has shown that certain traits of marine copepod change with life stage, where fast growing young nauplii have low N:P ratio, selecting for P rich-food and excreting at high N:P; while older, slow growing copepodites are characterized by higher N:P, selecting for N-rich food and excreting at low N:P. We developed a simple model for incorporating these age-specific traits within the European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model framework to test the importance of these traits in the marine ecosystem. Our results suggest that copepod’s community growth is limited by different factors in different life stages: nauplii