Sea-ice meiofauna biomass, carbon demand, and secondary production in Arctic pack ice north of Svalbard during the Polarstern expedition PS92 in spring 2015

We investigated the biomass, carbon demand, and secondary production of sea-ice meiofauna (here heterotrophs >10μm) at eight ice stations on Arctic pack ice north of Svalbard. Sampling was conducted during spring 2015 by sea-ice coring. The biomass (µgCm-²) for sea-ice meiofauna taxa was calculated by multiplying abundances (ind. m-²) of each taxon obtained from Ehrlich et al. (2020) (https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.00452) by the carbon content per individual of this taxon. The mass-specific ingestion rate of each taxon was multiplied by the biomass of that taxon at every station to determine the carbon demand per day. For the calculation of sea-ice meiofauna secondary production all production-biomass (P/B) ratios were obtained from Forest et al. (2014) (https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-2827-2014).