Doliolids and salps are pelagic tunicates that reproduce both asexually and sexually during their life history, occasionally forming massive blooms (> 1000 ind. m −3 ) that can clear large volumes of water daily. Although blooms of doliolids and salps are often associated with pulses of primary productivity, little is understood about their life history dynamics in response to the full range of oceanographic conditions they en...

Rapid warming could drastically alter host–parasite relationships, which is especially important for fisheries crucial to human nutrition and economic livelihoods, yet we lack a synthetic understanding of how warming influences parasite‐induced mortality in these systems. We conducted a meta‐analysis using 266 effect sizes from 52 empirical papers on harvested aquatic species and determined the relationship between parasite‐in...

Bloom‐forming gelatinous zooplankton occur circumglobally and significantly influence the structure of pelagic marine food webs and biogeochemical cycling through interactions with microbial communities. During bloom conditions especially, gelatinous zooplankton are keystone taxa that help determine the fate of primary production, nutrient remineralization, and carbon export. Using the pelagic tunicate Dolioletta gegenbauri as...

Doliolids are common gelatinous grazers in marine ecosystems around the world and likely influence carbon cycling due to their large population sizes with high growth and excretion rates. Aggregations or blooms of these organisms occur frequently, but they are difficult to measure or predict because doliolids are fragile, under sampled with conventional plankton nets, and can aggregate on fine spatial scales (1–10 m). Moreover...

Gelatinous zooplankton play a crucial role in pelagic marine food webs, however, due to methodological challenges and persistent misconceptions of their importance, the trophic role of gelatinous zooplankton remains poorly investigated. This is particularly true for small gelatinous zooplankton including the marine pelagic tunicate, Dolioletta gegenbauri . D. gegenbauri and other doliolid species occur persistently on wide sub...

Gelatinous zooplankton play a crucial role in marine planktonic food webs. However, primarily due to methodological challenges, the in situ diet of zooplankton remains poorly investigated and little is known about their trophic interactions including feeding behaviour, prey selection and in situ feeding rates. This is particularly true for gelatinous zooplankton including the marine pelagic tunicate, Dolioletta gegenbauri . In...

Here, we present the first study to investigate the seasonal importance of amino acid‐nitrogen (N) to Arctic near shore microbial communities. We measured primary productivity and the uptake of ammonium, nitrate, urea, and amino acids in two size fractions (> 3 μ m and approximately 0.7–3 μ m), as well as ammonium regeneration and nitrification using 15 N and 13 C tracer approaches in the near‐shore waters of the Chukchi Sea,...

The Arctic is warming at a rate nearly twice the global average, leading to thawing permafrost, increased coastal erosion, and enhanced delivery of riverine terrestrially‐derived dissolved organic matter (tDOM) to coastal waters. This humic‐rich tDOM has the ability to attenuate light required for photosynthesis and stimulate heterotrophic growth by supplying a source of labile organic carbon. Due to tDOM's high carbon to nitr...

Anthropogenic atmospheric loading of CO 2 raises concerns about combined effects of increasing ocean temperature and acidification, on biological processes. In particular, the response of appendicularian zooplankton to climate change may have significant ecosystem implications as they can alter biogeochemical cycling compared to classical copepod dominated food webs. However, the response of appendicularians to multiple climat...

In order to characterize copepod feeding in relation to microbial plankton community dynamics, we combined metabarcoding and metabolome analyses during a 22‐day seawater mesocosm experiment. Nutrient amendment of mesocosms promoted the development of haptophyte ( Phaeocystis pouchetii )‐ and diatom ( Skeletonema marinoi )‐dominated plankton communities in mesocosms, in which Calanus sp. copepods were incubated for 24 h in flow...

Herbivory in corals, especially for symbiotic species, remains controversial. To investigate the capacity of scleractinian and soft corals to capture microalgae, we conducted controlled laboratory experiments offering five algal species: the cryptophyte R hodomonas marina , the haptophytes Isochrysis galbana and P haeocystis globosa , and the diatoms C onticribra weissflogii and T halassiosira pseudonana . Coral species includ...

To investigate whether particles are ingested or merely trapped in the house of the appendicularian Oikopleura dioica, we developed a real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay and applied it in a controlled study where O. dioica was fed three types of algae at different concentrations. At particle concentrations ranging from 100 to 10,000 cells mL −1 , highest ingestion efficiencies (75‐96%) were observed w...