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Relative contribution of multiple stressors on copepod density and diversity dynamics in the Belgian part of the North Sea
Deschutter, Y.; Everaert, G.; De Schamphelaere, K.; De Troch, M. (2017). Relative contribution of multiple stressors on copepod density and diversity dynamics in the Belgian part of the North Sea. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 125(1-2): 350-359. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2017.09.038
In: Marine Pollution Bulletin. Macmillan: London. ISSN 0025-326X; e-ISSN 1879-3363
Peer reviewed article  
Available in  Authors 
    Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee: Open access 309513 [ download pdf ]
Keywords
    Aquatic communities > Plankton > Zooplankton
    ANE, North Sea [Marine Regions]
Author keywords
    Multiple stressors; Organic chemicals; Multimodel inference
Authors  Top 
  • Deschutter, Y.
  • Everaert, G.
  • De Schamphelaere, K.
  • De Troch, M.
Abstract
    The effect of multiple stressors on marine ecosystems is poorly understood. To partially bridge this knowledge gap we investigated the relative contribution of environmental variables to density and diversity dynamics of the zooplankton community in the Belgian part of the North Sea. We applied multimodel inference on generalized additive models to quantify the relative contribution of chlorophyll a, temperature, nutrients, salinity and anthropogenic chemicals (i.e. polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) to the dynamics of calanoid copepod species in the Belgian part of the North Sea. Temperature was the only predictor consistently showing a high importance in all models predicting the abundances of the selected copepod species. The relative contribution of other predictors was species-dependent. Anthropogenic chemicals were important predictors for three out of six species indicating that chemical mixtures at low concentrations should not be left unattended when performing risk assessments in a natural environment.
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