Tracing the origins of Calanus sp. in the Saguenay‑St. Lawrence Marine Park (Québec, Canada) using δ13C as a marker

The Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park (SSLMP) is a region that sustains a high abundance of zooplankton. The connectivity between zooplankton populations within the SSLMP and the surrounding areas was investigated for Calanus finmarchicus and C. hyperboreus. Deep-dwelling stage V copepodites (CVs) were collected in the Marine Park as well as in putative source regions in the St. Lawrence system in July 2009 (a time when they were entering into diapause). In May 2010, at the end of the overwintering period, diapausing CVs were sampled again in the Marine Park. To discriminate the origins and to predict the probable regions of origin of these deep-dwelling diapausing CVs in the SSLMP, a quadratic discriminant function analysis (QDFA) was performed. The classification algorithm was based on the carbon isotopic composition (δ13C) and percent carbon (%C) of individual copepods, as these variables are conservative when lipids are extracted prior to analysis. Our results suggest that about 23%...