Testing Bergmann’s rule in marine copepods

A contribution from the Global Alliance of Continuous Plankton Recorders (GACS) project, this paper by Max Campbell et al. in Ecography, tests whether food is a more important driver
of body size than temperature in marine copepods, whilst considering other drivers of the potential relationships with body size, such as oxygen levels, which have not been investigated previously for copepods. Results indicate that as the world warms, smaller copepod species are likely to emerge as ‘winners’, potentially reducing rates of fisheries production and carbon sequestration.

The  Global Alliance of Continuous Plankton Recorder Surveys (GACS) sampling effort since September 1997. Different coloured lines represent sampling transects of individual surveys: the North Atlantic CPR Survey (n = 54 176), the SCAR Southern Ocean CPR Survey (n = 34 005), the North Pacific CPR Survey (n = 4674) and the Australian CPR Survey (n = 4975).

Campbell, M. D., Schoeman, D. S., Venables, W., Abu‐Alhaija, R., Batten, S. D., Chiba, S., et al. (2021). Testing Bergmann’s rule in marine copepods. Ecography, ecog.05545. doi:10.1111/ecog.05545.