Zooplankton at the Northern Brazilian Coast: Evaluation and Gaps

Abstract

Leite, A.A.C.; Queiroz, A.F.S.; Morais, L.M.S.; Azevedo, C.C., and Martinelli Filho, J.E., 2020. Zooplankton at the Northern Brazilian Coast: Evaluation and gaps. In: Malvárez, G. and Navas, F. (eds.), Global Coastal Issues of 2020. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 95, pp. 12–17. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Research on planktonic communities in the Brazilian Northern coast started since the XIX century by foreigners, most of it being taxonomical surveys. The only literature reviews for the area are a technical report and a book chapter published in Portuguese by 2005. This article aimed to analyze the existing literature about zooplanktonic communities at the Northern coast of Brazil from a decade after the last review (2005 to 2015), to update and elucidate possible knowledge patterns and identify existing gaps. The bibliographic review considered the three states of the Brazilian North coast (Maranhão, Pará and Amapá), in the libraries of educational and research institutions, indexing platforms and databases on the internet (Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Scielo and Google Scholar). The most important parameters extracted from the publications were: year and language of publication, zooplankton density, dominant species, sampling mesh size, study area (by state), type of publication, coordinates, and research subject. A total of 222 publications were found, 45 (20.3%) referred to white publications (national and international scientific articles) and 177 (79.7%) referred to gray literature (do not published by peer review system). The Pará state showed a higher number of publications than Amapá and Maranhão sates together. The publications were mostly about zooplanktonic community description, copepod ecology and taxonomy or experimental approaches, and sampling took place mostly on estuarine environments (87.5%). Richness varied from 4 to 68 taxa, while density varied from 0.01 to 962,400 org.m^-3. Despite the numerous research in the period, there are important knowledge gaps, mainly in relation to collection sites, target organisms, and research subjects. Future research should focus primarily on oceanic areas (outer shelf) and on themes such as experimental ecology, biogeochemistry and long temporal scale surveys, so that a more comprehensive knowledge about zooplankton on the Brazilian Northern coast can be achieved.