Copepods under turbulence: grazing, behavior and metabolic rates

Abstract

This review focuses on the effects of small-scale turbulence on the rate processes of copepods, an important group of planktonic animals, and on their consequences for the dynamics of pelagic ecosystems. Turbulent water motion enhances the encounter rates between planktonic organisms and their food, changing the perception of the food environment for copepods and other planktonic animals. As a consequence, their feeding behaviour is affected, and the grazing rates significantly increased. Direct effects of small-scale turbulence for planktonic copepods also include the enhancement of metabolic energy expenditure, excretion rates, growth, and development rates. Through complex cumulative processes of the changes on individual rate-processes, the structural and functional properties of planktonic ecosystems are modified, with important consequences for the ultimate fate of biogenic carbon in aquatic systems