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Linkage Between Crustacean Zooplankton And Aquatic Bacteria, Kw Tang, V Turk, Hp Grossart

VIMS Articles

Bacteria and metazoan zooplankton (mainly crustaceans) are often viewed as 2 separate functional groups in the pelagic food webs indirectly linked via nutrient cycling and trophic cascades. Yet a zooplankter's body carries a high abundance of diverse bacteria, often at an equivalent concentration orders of magnitude higher than the ambient bacterial concentration. Zooplankton bodies are organic-rich micro-environments that support fast bacterial growth. Their physical-chemical conditions differ from those in the surrounding water and therefore select for different bacterial communities, including anaerobic bacteria that otherwise may not thrive in a well-oxygenated water column. The zooplankton body provides protection to the associated …