Diet Composition of Bathylagus euryops (Osmeriformes: Bathylagidae) Along the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Authors

Christopher J. Sweetman, Virginia Institute of Marine Science
Tracey Sutton, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
M. Vecchione, Smithsonian Institution
Robert J. Latour, College of William and Mary

ORCID

0000-0002-5280-7071

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers

ISSN

0967-0637

Publication Date

10-2014

Keywords

Diet composition, Mid-ocean ridges, Mesopelagic zone, Bathypelagic zone, Ontogeny, Vertical migration

Abstract

The northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, from Iceland to the Azores (MAR), is the largest topographical feature in the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its size, few studies have described dietary patterns of pelagic fishes along the MAR. MAR-ECO, a Census of Marine Life field project, aimed to describe the food web structure of abundant fish species along the ridge through a series of research expeditions to the MAR. Among the midwater fishes sampled during the MAR-ECO project, Bathylagus euryops (Osmeriformes: Bathylagidae) was the biomass-dominant pelagic species and ranked third in total abundance. In this paper, we describe the dietary composition of B. euryops along the MAR. Overall, copepods represented the dominant prey group consumed by B. euryops. Multivariate analyses, including a cluster analysis and a canonical correspondence analysis, revealed that fish size significantly influenced the diet of B. euryops with ostracods representing the most important prey group at small sizes (<95 mm) and decapod shrimp and calanoid copepods becoming more important with increasing fish size. Due to the high abundance and biomass observed along the MAR combined with its role as a link for energy transfer between zooplankton and higher trophic level predators, B. euryops appears to be an ecologically important species in the oceanic food web of the North Atlantic Ocean.

DOI

10.1016/j.dsr.2014.06.010

Volume

92

First Page

107

Last Page

114

Comments

©2014 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Additional Comments

NSF grant #: OCE 0623551

NSUWorks Citation

Christopher J. Sweetman, Tracey Sutton, M. Vecchione, and Robert J. Latour. 2014. Diet Composition of Bathylagus euryops (Osmeriformes: Bathylagidae) Along the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge .Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers : 107 -114. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/527.