Microzooplankton (nauplii and copepodites) and mesozooplankton taxonomy and abundance, ingestion rates, and nauplii gut evacuation rates from net haul samples during the Atlantic Meridional Transect AMT13 cruise in September-October 2003

This dataset contains microzooplankton (nauplii and copepodites) and mesozooplankton taxonomy and abundance, ingestion rates, and nauplii gut evacuation rates data from net haul samples collected during the AMT13 cruise in the Atlantic between the UK and the Falkland Islands, in September-October 2003. To estimate zooplankton abundance, vertical net samples were taken from 200 m to the surface with a WP-2 net, equipped with filtering cod-ends, during night stations (between 00:30 and 04:30 local time). The pore mesh net was 53 µm and 30 µm for the filtering cod-ends. Tows were performed at low speed (0.5 m s^-1). The net was not equipped with a flow-meter, so to calculate the volume filtered the diameter of the net (27 cm) was used to calculate the volume filtered (11.45 m³) for each cast. Samples were screened through 1000, 500, 200 and 30 µm meshes, put in 250 ml bottles and fixed with 4% buffered formaldehyde. In the laboratory, abundance of main taxonomic groups of metazooplankton was determined under a stereomicroscope. Ingestion rates were calculated using the gut fluorescence method (Mackas and Bohrer, 1976). The data were collected by scientists from the University of Oviedo Department of Organism and Systems Biology.