CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

SE PRESENTA PARTE DE LA PRIMERA CARILLA.-Copepods are key components in the marine communities because of their important role in thetransfer of matter and energy from primary producers to higher trophic levels and in the export of organic matter from the euphotic to deeper layers of the oceans (CALBET et al., 2000). Because of their role as prey for fishes at different stages of development, knowledge of zooplankton abundance and biomass in spatial and temporal scales remains a key element ofthe marine ecosystem approaches (IRIGOIEN et al., 2009).In fisheries science, accurate estimations of abundance, biomass and production of the different components of the food webs are necessary for the construction and implementation of ecosystem models(CHRISTENSEN; PAULY, 1992). Paracalanus parvus, Ctenocalanus vanus,Calanoides carinatus and Oithona nana are dominant copepod species (50-100 %) in the coastal waters of the Argentine Sea (RAMÍREZ, 1981; VIÑAS et al., 2002). These copepods play an important role in the pelagic food web as the main prey item for larvae (CIECHOMSKI; WEISS, 1974; VIÑAS; RAMÍREZ, 1996) and juveniles and adults of anchovy(ANGELESCU, 1982; PÁJARO, 2002). Thus, an accurate estimation of their biomass and productivity is necessary to quantify the transfer of matter and energy across the planktonic food webs.So far, there is only one regional work in which the individual biomass of copepods has been estimated (FERNÁNDEZ ARÁOZ, 1991) in the Argentine Sea, but early copepodite stages were not included because of the mesh size (220 μm) employed.Our aim was to estimate the individual biomass of all the stages of the above-mentionedcopepods by the geometric method and to establish, for each species, significant regression models predicting biovolume from some linear body dimension.