Conclusion
Morphological changes in the mesozooplankton community were correlated
to the ecosystem carbon export intensity, but, contrary to our
hypothesis, opacity was the parameter most strongly correlated export,
likely due to taxonomical changes in the community composition in
response to environmental forcing. Transparency variations throughout
time and with respect to carbon export should be investigated further.
Additionally, this study demonstrates the benefits of combining a
trait-based strategy from quantitative imaging of individual organisms
with a molecular approach. Finally, significant correlations were found
for some taxonomic groups between proportions of sequences from
metabarcoding data and biomass or abundance, derived from Zooscan images
showing potential for this method to be refined in a way that allows for
abundance estimation. Numerous efforts should be done in this direction
to study the potential of a quantitative molecular approach and develop
possible support methods.
Acknowledgments
French co-authors wish to thank public taxpayers who fund their
salaries. SDA and MP acknowledge funding from the Institut des Sciences
du Calcul et des Données (ISCD) of Sorbonne Université through the
support of the sponsored project-team FORMAL (From ObseRving to Modeling
oceAn Life), the mobility of MP to BIOS, and the PhD funding of MP. SDA,
LBB and MP also acknowledge the support of the French Agence Nationale
de la Recherche (ANR), under grant ANR-22-CE02-0023-01 (project
TRAITZOO). BIOS/ASU authors acknowledge the funding by the Simons
Foundation International as part of the BIOS-SCOPE
(https://scope.bios.edu/), the NSF funded OCE-1829318, and the Bermuda
Atlantic Time-series Study program (BATS; NSF OCE-1756105). Special
thanks to the BATS personnel and to the Captains and crew of the RV
Atlantic Explorer for their logistical support at sea. This research
made use of the FCMMF laboratory equipment at BIOS (NSF
DBI-1522206).