Ice algae as supplementary food rather than major energy source for the Barents sea zooplankton community

Abstract

The Barents Sea is a hotspot for environmental change due to global warming. These changes impact the structure and functioning of the marine ecosystem year-round, and it is therefore important to gain knowledge on trophic relationships and the energy flow from primary producers, i.e., ice algae (sympagic algae) and phytoplankton (pelagic algae) to consumers over the entire seasonal cycle. By using different lipid components as trophic markers, we provide seasonal coverage of the carbon and food-source composition of five of the most abundant and ecologically important zooplankton taxa inhabiting the Barents Sea: copepods, krill, amphipods, pteropods and chaetognaths. Based on the composition of algal-produced fatty acid (FA) markers, carbon-source composition of the zooplankton species reflected changes in the production and availability of food resources during different periods of the year. For example, relative proportions of the dinoflagellate/Phaeocystis FA marker 18:4(n-3) peaked during summer in Calanus copepods, the amphipod Themisto abyssorum and the chaetognath Pseudosagitta maxima, when the production of this FA reached maximum concentrations in phytoplankton. The composition of carnivory FAs (relative contribution of copepod-associated FAs, ratio 18:1(n-9)/18:1(n-7)) and the ratio of zoo- to phytosterols indicated that most grazers relied more on heterotrophic prey during polar night and spring while switching to a more algae-based diet during the summer. Based on source-specific highly branched isoprenoids (HBIs), sympagic carbon had generally a minor contribution to the nutrition of the zooplankton community, particularly during winter and spring when sympagic HBIs were virtually undetected in the animals. In contrast, sympagic HBI metabolites were detected in krill, amphipods and the pteropod Clione limacina during summer and autumn. The krill Meganyctiphanes norvegica was unique in terms of its HBI composition as the only species containing both sympagic and pelagic HBIs during spring. Our results indicate that the Barents Sea zooplankton community is largely based on pelagic carbon, while sympagic carbon is only supplementing species-specific diets, mostly during the second half of the year. This relatively low trophic dependency on sea-ice algae might be an indication of the resilience of this food web towards ongoing sea-ice decline that causes changes to the timing and availability of sympagic and pelagic carbon and food sources.