Yeon-Ji Chae

Assessing the biomass of zooplankton compensates for the difference between number of individuals and the accumulated body weight of the community, which helps assess aquatic ecosystem food web functions. Daphnia are crustaceans that play an intermediate role in biological interactions within food webs. The morphology and body specification of Daphnia differ during growth; hence, it is essential to apply species-specific equations to estimate biomass. We evaluated the length–weight regression equations used previously to estimate Daphnia magna biomass and conducted regression analyses using various body specifications and biomass measurements taken directly using devices such as a microbalance and microscopic camera. Biomass estimated using an equation from the Environmental Protection Agency was significantly different from the direct measurement: average biomass was lower, indicating that the equation possibly underestimated actual biomass. The biomass of D. magna had a higher multiple R² value when length was compared with width and area, and a linear regression equation was the most suitable equation for biomass estimation. Because body specifications and biomass are affected by various environmental factors, the development of accurate species-specific biomass estimation equations will contribute to obtaining fundamental data with which the biological responses of zooplankton to aquatic ecosystem changes can be assessed.

The gut bacterial communities of copepods can affect metabolic processes, and consequently, their activity can be related to the release of organic substances to the environment. Hence, they are important for organic matter cycling in marine coast food webs. However, information regarding the variation in gut bacterial communities based on copepod species and environmental variations is limited. We analysed the differences in gut bacterial communities from dominant copepod species, i.e., Acartia hudsonica, Sinocalanus tenellus, and Pseudodiaptomus inopinus, in a brackish reservoir. The core bacteria among the copepod species and locations consisted of the following main operational taxonomic units (OTUs): Novosphingobium capsulatum and the family Rhodobacteraceae belonging to Alphaproteobacteria, which is abundant in seawater and freshwater aquatic ecosystems as a zooplankton-associated bacterial community. The bacterial community composition of each copepod (except the core species) showed high variability. The bacterial community diversity differed depending on the copepod species and the sites’ environmental conditions, especially salinity, e.g., compositional variations in the bacterial community of P. inopinus were high at sites with low salinity. Therefore, the gut bacterial community of each copepod species responds differently to the environment.