Abstract
The northern Andaman Sea off Myanmar is one of the relatively high productive regions in the Indian Ocean. The abundance, biomass and species composition of mesozooplankton and their relationships with environmental variables in the epipelagic zone (∼200 m) were studied for the first time during the Sino-Myanmar joint cruise (February 2020). The mean abundance and biomass of mesozooplankton were (1 916.7±1 192.9) ind./m3 and (17.8±7.9) mg/m3, respectively. A total of 213 species (taxa) were identified from all samples. The omnivorous Cyclopoida Oncaea venusta and Oithona spp. were the top two dominant taxa. Three mesozooplankton communities were determined via cluster analysis: the open ocean in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal (Group A), the transition zone across the Preparis Channel (Group B), and nearshore water off the Ayeyarwady Delta and along the Tanintharyi Coast (Group C). Variation partitioning analysis revealed that the interaction of physical and biological factors explained 98.8% of mesozooplankton community spatial variation, and redundancy analysis revealed that column mean chlorophyll a concentration (CMCHLA) was the most important explanatory variable (43.1%). The abundance and biomass were significantly higher in Group C, the same as CMCHLA and column mean temperature (CMT) and in contrast to salinity, and CMT was the dominant factor. Significant taxon spatial variations were controlled by CMCHLA, salinity and temperature. This study suggested that mesozooplankton spatial variation was mainly regulated by physical processes through their effects on CMCHLA. The physical processes were simultaneously affected by heat loss differences, freshwater influx, eddies and depth.
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We thank the co-operators in Myanmar and the captains and crews of the R/V Xiangyanghong 6, as well as the scientific parties of the cruise.
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Foundation item: The Scientific Research Fund of the Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources under contract No. JG2210; the Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction II Program under contract No. GASI-01-EIND-STwin; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 42176148 and 42176039.
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Du, P., Zeng, D., Lin, F. et al. Epipelagic mesozooplankton communities in the northeastern Indian Ocean off Myanmar during the winter monsoon. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 42, 57–69 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-022-2090-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-022-2090-5