Project: Collaborative Research: Characterizing benthic mysid ecology and animal-fluid interactions in response to background flow, food, and light conditions

NSF Award Abstract:
Mysid shrimp are a group of zooplankton that are distributed in diverse aquatic environments – freshwater, marine and estuarine – in both shallow and deep waters throughout the world. Due to their ubiquitous presence, mysids form a critical link in marine food webs, yet little is known about their ecology and interactions with their local surroundings. An interdisciplinary team of investigators will develop and deploy a novel in situ imaging system in coastal Maine over the span of two summers, conducting a comprehensive investigation of mysid behavior in their natural environment, including their interactions and distribution under varying local flow, food, and light conditions. The investigators will train two graduate students at the interface of fluid mechanics, instrumentation, and ecology. In addition, ten students from Florida Atlantic University and the University of Southern Maine will be invited to participate in annual workshops on ecological fluid mechanics, with first-generation college students or those from other underrepresented communities encouraged to apply. The cutting-edge instrumentation suite, including the imaging system being developed as part of this project, can be used to address different questions associated with spatial patterns and zooplankton or fish behavior in the future. Image datasets will be openly accessible to the scientific community and the public. Project results will be disseminated through public outreach lectures at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Darling Marine Center, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Mysids have been historically understudied compared to other zooplankton groups (e.g., copepods, krill), despite their ubiquitous presence and importance to marine food webs. This project will investigate mysid behavior, feeding ecology, and swarm distributions in relation to prey availability, light levels, and background flow conditions, focusing on a single mysid species – Neomysis americana. The investigators will use a state-of-the-art suite of instruments in the field, including two separate imaging systems and a high resolution Acoustic Doppler Profiler, to conduct field experiments at the Damariscotta River Estuary. This instrumentation suite will collect data to analyze mysid distributions and animal-fluid interactions in their natural environment, as well as ancillary data on benthic particle/plankton community composition and physical parameters (including currents, waves, temperature and depth). Multi-spectral analysis will find correlation patterns with water turbidity, flow conditions, bottom topography, mysid abundance, and food source concentrations. Mysid samples will be collected several times a week throughout the summer months to monitor changes in the mysid population abundance, sex ratio, and stage structure. The investigators will determine how seasonal changes in environmental variables and Neomysis population structure affect distribution within the estuary, as well as small-scale swimming and aggregation behavior. They will answer questions related to how swarm organization, aggregation, and swimming behavior differ under conditions of varying zooplankton abundance and swarm composition. Results will ultimately improve our understanding of marine ecosystem dynamics.

This project is jointly funded by the Biological Oceanography Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.