Abstract
Ocean deoxygenation, warming, and acidification resulting from global change and increasing nutrient inputs are major threats to marine ecosystems. Despite this, spatial and temporal patterns of oxygen availability and their impacts on marine life are understudied compared to warming and acidification, particularly in coastal tropical ecosystems. We measured the abundance of major groups of zooplankton in the context of five covarying environmental parameters [temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen (DO), dissolved organic matter (DOM), and chlorophyll concentration] in a tropical estuary for one year. Partial least squares demonstrated that environmental conditions explained 20% of the variation in the community and found that temperature, salinity, DO, and DOM were most important (Variable Importance in Projection [VIP] > 0.8). A generalized linear model identified depth, DO, salinity, and chlorophyll as significant main effects, and temperature and DOM were also significant via two-way interactions (p