Mesopelagic organisms play a critical role in marine ecosystems, channelling energy and organic matter across food webs and serving as the primary prey for many open-ocean predators. Nevertheless, trophic pathways involving mesopelagic organisms are poorly understood and their contribution to food web structure remains difficult to assess (St. John et al., 2016). Existing data to assess mesopelagic feeding interactions and energy transfer are scattered in the literature or remain unpublished, making it difficult to locate and use such datasets. As part of the EU funded project SUMMER - Sustainable Management of Mesopelagic Resources H2020-BG-2018-2, GA: 817806) (https://summerh2020.eu/), we created MesopTroph, a georeferenced database of diet, trophic biogeochemical markers, and energy content of mesopelagic organisms and other marine taxa from the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea, compiled from 191 published and non-published sources. MesopTroph includes seven datasets: (i) diet compositions from stomach content analysis, (ii) stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen (δ13C and δ15N), (iii) fatty acid trophic markers (FATM), (iv) major and trace elements, (v) energy density, (vi) estimates of diet proportions, and (vii) trophic positions. The database contains information from 4918 samples, representing 51119 specimens from 499 species or genera, covering a wide range of trophic guilds and taxonomic groups. Metadata provided for each record include the location, dates and method of sample collection, taxonomic ranks (phylum, class, order, family), number and size (or size range) of sampled organisms, method/model used in data analysis, reference and DOI of the original data source. Compiled data were checked for errors, missing information, and to avoid duplicate entries, and scientific names and taxonomy were standardized.
In order to reconstruct the presence of Megafauna in relation to vegetation cover in Central Europe, a total of 250 pollen samples and 203 samples for spores of the coprophilous fungi Sporormiella and Sordaria were analyzed. The results are accompanied by measurements of δ7Li and n-alkanes. Samples derive from composite drill cores from Holzmaar and Auel infilled maar and cover the last 60,000 years. This work is part of the ELSA project.
Die erfolgreich beendete Expedition DIVA 1 (Juli 2000) dient der Erfassung der Artenvielfalt der abyssalen Ebenen des Angola-Beckens, mit dem allgemeinen Ziel, den Kenntnisstand über die globale Biodiversität des Benthos der Tiefsee, über latitudinale Gradienten und die Regionalisierung der Fauna zu verbessern. Ein internationales Team von Systematikern kooperiert bei der Analyse der Meio-, Makro- und Megafauna. Mit dem beantragten Projekt sollen die individuen- und artenreichen Isopoda bearbeitet werden, um die Diversität, die phylogenetische und geographische Herkunft sowie die Variabilität der Artenpräsenz entlang des ca. 700 km langen Transektes von DIVA 1 zu beschreiben, womit erstmalig für eine typische abyssale Hochseeregion die Verbreitung der Isopoda über einen längeren Transekt erfasst wird. Um eine nachhaltige Nutzung der gewonnenen Daten zu ermöglichen, sollen illustrierte Bestimmungsschlüssel und Artbeschreibungen für die bisher unbekannten Arten publiziert werden. Molekulargenetische Arbeiten werden im Zusammenhang mit einem anderen beantragten Projekt (ANDEEP) durchgeführt, um Aspekte der Phylogenese und der intraspezifischen Differenzierung der Isopoda der Tiefsee zu analysieren.