Conservation of Carotenoid Pigments During Passage Through the Guts of Calanoid Copepods: Specificity and Physiological Induction

类胡萝卜素被广泛用作化学分类 分布和组成的标记 海洋中的初级生产者。 越来越多的类胡萝卜素 作为营养动力学和地球化学探针， 研究浮游动物进食活动等过程， 碎屑形成和垂直有机通量。 大部分 这些应用需要测量中的类胡萝卜素 浮游动物的内脏或粪便。 量化这些 测量需要工作知识， 类胡萝卜素色素在通过 直觉 目前，这类信息稀缺且存在 数据并不表明类胡萝卜素的可预测模式 由桡足类进行加工。 问题的一部分似乎是 迄今为止的研究既不广泛， 密集。 该项目提供了一个系统的评估的命运， 常用的类胡萝卜素标记色素，从主要 浮游植物类群，在通过桡足类肠道。 该项目的目标是确定 类胡萝卜素在肠道通过过程中的命运是 桡足类物种（例如，有些物种会破坏 类胡萝卜素，而其他的则没有？），或者桡足类 在进食的时候。 质量平衡实验 将被用来估计摄入的色素量 在生产过程中被保存、衍生和/或销毁的 通过肠道。 至少有四种桡足类 被选为一系列栖息地的代表， 生态学和生理学，将用于实验。 这项研究将首先从一个物种中筛选桡足类， 各种环境（例如，高纬度和低纬度地区， 近岸和开放的沿海沃茨）用于类胡萝卜素加工 特色 实验将阐明 驯化对食品环境的影响（即，最近 摄食史）、消化生理学的昼夜变化 食物浓度的高频变异性 （斑块）对处理摄入的藻类 类胡萝卜素 最终，这种密集的方法应该 提供了一定程度的可预测性， 某些食物网中的类胡萝卜素， 了解动物和环境如何影响使用 作为营养动力学或地球化学探针的色素。

Carotenoid pigments are widely used as chemotaxonomic markers fordescribing the distributions and composition of primary producers in the sea. Increasingly, carotenoids are being used as trophic dynamic and geochemical probes for studying processes such as zooplankton feeding activity, detritus formation, and vertical organic fluxes. Most of these applications require the measurement of carotenoids in zooplankton guts or feces. Quantification of these measurements requires a working knowledge of whether or not carotenoid pigments are conserved during passage through the gut. At present, such information is scarce and existing data do not suggest a predictable pattern of carotenoid processing by copepods. Part of the problem seems to be that studies to date have been neither extensive nor intensive. This project provides a systematic evaluation of the fate of commonly used carotenoid marker pigments, from major phytoplankton taxa, during passage through the copepod gut. The goal of the project is to ascertain the extent to which the fate of carotenoids uring gut passage is a function of the copepod species (e.g., Do some species destroy carotenoids while others do not?), or the copepod's physiology at the time of feeding. Mass balance experiments will be used to estimate the quantities of ingested pigments that are conserved, derivatized and/or destroyed during passage through the gut. At least four species of copepods, selected as representatives of a range of habitats, ecologies and physiologies, will be used in the experiments. The study will serve, first to screen copepods from a variety of environments (e.g.,, high and low latitudes, nearshore and open coastal waters) for carotenoid-processing characteristics. Experiments will then clarify the influence of acclimation to food environment (i.e., recent feeding history), diel variability in digestive physiology and high frequency variability in food concentration (patchiness) on the processing of ingested algal carotenoids. Ultimately, this intensive approach should provide a level of predictability about the fate of carotenoids in certain food webs, and lead to an understanding of how animals and environments affect the use of pigments as trophic dynamic or geochemical probes.