| Popis: |
Diel vertical migration (DVM) is a ubiquitous phenomenon in marine and freshwater plankton communities. Most commonly, plankton migrate to surface waters at dusk and return to deeper waters at dawn. Up until recently, it was thought that DVM was triggered by a relative change in visible light intensity. However, evidence has shown that DVM also occurs in the deep sea where no direct and background sunlight penetrates. To identify whether such DVM is associated with latitudinal and seasonal day light variation, one and a half years of recorded acoustic data, a measure of zooplankton abundance and movement, were examined. Acoustic Doppler current profilers, moored at eight different sub-tropical latitudes in the North-Atlantic Ocean, measured in the vertical range of 500-1600 m. DVM was observed to follow day length variation with a change in season and latitude at all depths. DVM followed the rhythm of local sunrise and sunset precisely between 500 and 650 m. It continued below 650 m, where the deepest penetrable irradiance level are |
