Mesopelagic zone ecology and biogeochemistry - a synthesis
By C. Robinson, D. Steinberg, Thomas R. Anderson, J. Arístegui, C. Carlson, Jessica R. Frost, J. Ghiglione, S. Hernández‐León, G. Jackson, R. Koppelmann and 8 more. 2010
325 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The mesopelagic zone is the oceanic region through which carbon and other elements must pass in order to reach deeper waters or the sea floor. However, the food web interactions that occur in the mesopelagic zone are difficult to measure and so, despite their crucial importance to global elemental cycles, are not very well known. Recent developments in technology and new approaches have advanced the study of the variability in and controls upon the distribution and diversity of organisms in the mesopelagic zone, including the roles of respiration, recycling, and repackaging of particulate and dissolved organic material. However, there are remarkably few syntheses of the ecology and biogeochemistry of the microbes and metazoa that permanently reside or habitually visit this ‘twilight zone’. Without this synthesis, it is difficult to assess the impact of ongoing changes in ocean hydrography and chemistry, due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, on the biological carbon pump. This paper reviews what is known about the distribution of microbes and metazoa in the mesopelagic zone in relation to their activity and impact on global biogeochemical cycles. Thus, gaps in our knowledge are identified and suggestions made for priority research programmes that will improve our ability to predict the effects of climate change on carbon sequestration.
Subfields: Ecology, Oceanography
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de9e5ab4231f083dd2d33a41398d39d18f6d1033
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Ecology
In Oceanography
Citations in the corpus
- The trophodynamics of marine top predators: Current knowledge, recent advances and challenges (2015, background): “…Fortier et al. (1994), Sommer and Stibor (2002) and Woodd-Walker et al. (2002) Micronekton Brodeur et al. (2003), Lara-Lopez et al. (2012) and Robinson et al. (2010) Gelatinous Hay (2006), Pitt et al. (2009), Purcell (2009) and Richardson et al. (2009) Crustaceans Hopkins et al. (1994) and…”
- A global biogeographic classification of the mesopelagic zone (2017, background): “The importance of pelagic ecosystems to services supporting life on Earth, such as carbon cycling, are widely acknowledged but poorly understood (Robinson et al., 2010; St. John et al., 2016).”
- Emerging concepts on microbial processes in the bathypelagic ocean-ecology, biogeochemistry, and genomics (2010, background): “This zone receives organic inputs from overlying layers in the form of particulate (POM) and dissolved organic matter (DOM) after substantial remineralization and transformation via complex actions of epi- and mesopelagic biota (Steinberg et al., 2008; Robinson et al., 2010).”
- Deep, diverse and definitely different: unique attributes of the world's largest ecosystem (2010, background): “Temporal dynamics in the pelagic system have a major impact in the shaping of the ecosystem (Robison, 2004; Robinson et al., 2010).”
- Zooplankton and the Ocean Carbon Cycle. (2017, background): “These processes, along with remineralization by bacteria, cause a rapid attenuation of sinking POC with depth through the mesopelagic zone (Steinberg et al. 2008a, Robinson et al. 2010).”
- The biological pump in a high CO 2 world (2012, background): “Reports indicate that microbial contribution to flux attenuation may increase with depth, dominating in the lower mesopelagic and below (Steinberg et al. 2008b, Anderson & Tang 2010, Burd et al. 2010, Robinson et al. 2010).”
- Zooplankton in the eastern tropical north Pacific: Boundary effects of oxygen minimum zone expansion (2013, unknown): “At mesopelagic depths, layers are likely responsible for much of the processing of sinking material and ultimately the amount and composition of carbon and particulates reaching the deep seafloor (Robinson et al., 2010).”
- Quantifying carbon fluxes from primary production to mesopelagic fish using a simple food web model (2019, background): “It also highlights major gaps in our knowledge of the ecology and trophodynamics of mesopelagic ecosystems and their associated links to PP, gaps that are not easy to fill because food web interactions in the mesopelagic zone are difficult to measure (Robinson et al., 2010).”