Colleagues,
Along with my co-authors Kelly Benoit-Bird and Mark Moline, I would like
to bring to your attention a paper recently published in Proceedings of
the Royal Society of London B (Biological Sciences) entitled
/Predator-guided sampling reveals biotic structure in the bathypelagic/.
The full reference, online location, and full abstract are provided
below. We are happy to provide .pdf copies of the article on request by
email (brandon.south...@sea-inc.net or kben...@coas.oregonstate.edu) as
a professional courtesy.
Thanks,
Brandon Southall
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Benoit-Bird KJ, Southall BL, Moline MA. 2016. Predator-guided sampling
reveals biotic structure in the bathypelagic. Proc. R. Soc. B 283:
20152457. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.2457
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1825/20152457.abstract
We targeted a habitat used differentially by deep-diving, air-breathing
predators to empirically sample their prey's distributions off southern
California. Fine-scale measurements of the spatial variability of
potential prey animals from the surface to 1200 m were obtained using
conventional fisheries echosounders aboard a surface ship and uniquely
integrated into a deep-diving autonomous vehicle. Significant spatial
variability in the size, composition, total biomass, and spatial
organization of biota was evident over all spatial scales examined and
was consistent with the general distribution patterns of foraging
Cuvier's beaked whales (/Ziphius cavirostris/) observed in separate
studies. Striking differences found in prey characteristics between
regions at depth, however, did not reflect differences observed in
surface layers. These differences in deep pelagic structure horizontally
and relative to surface structure, absent clear physical differences,
change our long-held views of this habitat as uniform. The revelation
that animals deep in the water column are so spatially heterogeneous at
scales from 10 m to 50 km critically affects our understanding of the
processes driving predator–prey interactions, energy transfer,
biogeochemical cycling, and other ecological processes in the deep sea,
and the connections between the productive surface mixed layer and the
deep-water column.
--------------
--
Brandon L. Southall, Ph.D.
President, Senior Scientist, SEA, Inc.
Research Associate, University of California, Santa Cruz
9099 Soquel Drive, Suite 8, Aptos, CA 95003, USA
831.332.8744 (mobile); 831.661.5177 (office); 831.661.5178 (fax)
brandon.south...@sea-inc.net; www.sea-inc.net
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