Influence of nutrient supply and foraging behavior and life history of copepods on the dynamics of a widespread pelagic food web module

浮游生物群落的大小结构强烈影响远洋生态系统的功能特性，如营养通量，初级生产和出口生产，以及食物链上的能量转移。在许多海洋和淡水系统中，桡足类在这些过程中发挥着关键作用，并可能作为替代食物链之间的“开关”（从大型微型浮游植物到桡足类的短而直接的食物链，以及从小型微型浮游植物通过纤毛虫到桡足类的较长食物链）。微型浮游植物、微型浮游植物、纤毛虫和桡足类与无机营养盐一起构成食物网图中的一个五边形。桡足类在浮游食物网中的作用受到营养和光照供应、食饵性捕食以及桡足类行为和生活史特征的调节。我们建议从理论上探讨这些调节因素对远洋生态系统动态的影响，使用“五边形食物网”作为一个易于处理的概念简化。具体而言，我们将使用五角形模的微分方程模型的各种扩展来询问其动力学如何受到（i）桡足类食物选择行为的影响（例如转换），（ii）限制营养素的供应（氮和硅），（iii）浮游植物碳营养化学计量的变化，和（iv）桡足类阶段结构，特别是特定阶段的喂养率和死亡率。我们希望产生经验检验的假设，并有助于更深入的概念理解自然和人为的影响，大小结构，营养结构和能量转移通过远洋食物网。

The size structure of plankton communities strongly influences functional properties of pelagic ecosystems such as nutrient fluxes, primary and export production, and energy transfer up the food chain. In many marine and freshwater systems copepods play a key role in these processes and may act as a 'switch' between alternative food chains (a short, direct one from larger microphytoplankton to copepods and a longer one from small nanophytoplankton through ciliates to copepods). Together with the stock of inorganic nutrients, nanophytoplankton, microphytoplankton, ciliates and copepods form a pentagon in a food web graph. The role of copepods in pelagic food webs is modulated by nutrient and light supply, planktivore predation, and by behavioral and life history characteristics of the copepods. We propose to theoretically explore the influences of these modulating factors on pelagic ecosystem dynamics using the 'pentagon food web' as a tractable conceptual simplification. Specifically, we will use various extensions of a differential equation model of the pentagon module to ask how its dynamics are affected by (i) food choice behavior of copepods (e.g. switching), (ii) the supply with limiting nutrients (nitrogen and silicon), (iii) variation in the carbon to nutrient stoichiometry of phytoplankton, and (iv) by copepod stage structure, in particular stage-specific feeding and mortality rates. We expect to generate empirically testable hypotheses and to contribute to a deeper conceptual understanding of natural and anthropogenic influences on size structure, trophic structure and energy transfer through pelagic food webs.