Lipid content and stable isotopes of zooplankton during five winters around the northern Antarctic Peninsula

• Main Authors: Walsh, Jennifer, Reiss, Christian
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Southern Ocean; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/4315223; https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hhmgqnkdx

The Southern Ocean zooplankton community is diverse, yet most species are understudied, especially with respect to their overwinter feeding ecologies. This dataset describes body condition and trophic biomarker data (lipid content and stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen) from 19 zooplankton species collected over five consecutive winters (August and September 2012 – 2016) around the northern Antarctic Peninsula. To complement these data and provide context for interpretation, we report environmental data (percent sea-ice cover, sea-ice type, water temperature, salinity, and integrated chlorophyll-a (to 100 m)) as well as species abundance data at each sampling location. For most species, these are the first winter measurements or time series of body condition, trophic position, and abundance in relation to environmental variables around the northern Antarctic Peninsula. For samples from pooled stations (denoted as "POOLED" in the station column), we estimated tow depth and environmental variables by calculating the mean of each variable for the sampling area and year. Reported abundance for pooled stations is the mean abundance for a given species within the sampling area and year. To estimate sea-ice type, we assigned a number to each ice type (0 = none, 1 = slush, 2 = thin, 3 = first, 4 = multi), calculated the mean for the area and year, and rounded the result to the nearest whole number. Station coordinates and daylight conditions are not reported for samples from pooled stations (denoted as "NA"). In 2012, percent sea-ice cover and sea-ice type were not determined. Sampling stations were characterized as "ice" (100 %) or "no ice" (0 %). Where sea-ice conditions were not reported, "NR" appears in the dataset. For most species in 2012 and for small species in other years, the number of individuals analyzed for lipids and stable isotopes were not recorded (denoted as "NR" in the dataset). In a few cases, lipid was undetectable in samples. These are denoted "ND" (for none detected) in the dataset. Stable ...