Zooplankton play a pivotal role in the marine biological pump, and vertical variations in their functional trait composition and functional diversity can affect the export of organic carbon. However, our comprehension of the vertical variations in functional traits and functional diversity of zooplankton in the northwestern Pacific is insufficient. This study examined the vertical distributions in the functional trait composit...

Functional traits determine the fitness of organisms and mirror their ecological functions. Although trait-based approaches provide ecological insights, it is underexploited for marine zooplankton, particularly with respect to seasonal variation. Here, based on four major functional traits, including body length, feeding type, trophic group, and reproduction mode, we quantified the seasonal variations of mesozooplankton functi...

The Sansha Yongle blue hole (SYBH) is the world’s deepest blue hole known so far and its unique hydrochemical characteristics make it a valuable site for studying biodiversity and ecological processes. Here, we used metabarcoding approach to investigate the diversity, assembly mechanism and co-occurrence pattern of planktonic microbiome in SYBH. Our results revealed the distinct separation of communities from upper oxic, middl...

Understanding the diel vertical migration (DVM) patterns of zooplankton has important implications for biological pumping and pelagic food webs. The functional traits of zooplankton generally determine their distribution in the environment. However, knowledge about the DVM patterns of zooplankton with different functional traits is limited. Here, we used a trait-based approach to study the vertical distributions of zooplankton...

The coastal water transported by the combined action of southwest wind jet and anticyclonic eddy substantially influences the biological processes in the midwestern South China Sea. However, how the wind-driven jet affects the zooplankton community remains unclear. In this study, the species number, abundance, and vertical distribution of medusae were investigated in the wind-driven jet (WJR) and non-wind-driven jet regions (N...

The active carbon flux mediated by diel vertical migration (DVM) of zooplankton is an important component of the downward carbon flux in the ocean. However, active fluxes transported by zooplankton DVM are poorly known in the South China Sea (SCS) and the Western Philippine Sea (WPS). In this study, active carbon fluxes in the SCS and WPS were evaluated on the basis of the data of mesozooplankton community and DVM at two stati...