Co-Convenors: Toru Kobari (Japan) and William Peterson (USA)

Invited Speaker:
Lidia Yebra (Oceanographic Center of Málaga, Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO), Spain)

Zooplankton communities play important roles on the transfer of primary production to higher trophic levels of marine ecosystems. In the past two decades, the quantitative evaluation of the energy flow has been emphasized for better understanding how marine ecosystems respond to climate change and global warming. To date, primary production can be globally estimated with remote sensing techniques and validated with in situ experiments using radio or stable isotope. Although secondary production has been estimated with various methods (natural cohort, artificial cohort, molting rate, egg production, nucleic acids ratio, enzyme activity and empirical models), there is little information which method is relevant for natural zooplankton population or community. Thereby, we have little knowledge or confidence of secondary production measurements compared with that of primary production. In this workshop, we intend to review current methodologies to measure secondary production. Through published reports of secondary production on natural zooplankton population or community, this workshop will clarify the assumptions, advantages and disadvantages for each method. We will also discuss new techniques (nucleic acids ratio, enzyme activity, chitobiase, or other methods) and challenges in the calibration between the estimates using different methods.