Female prosome lengths of six calanoid copepod species from Helgoland Roads, North Sea

Here, we studied seasonal changes of female prosome length from six common copepods, Acartia clausi, Centropages hamatus, Centropages typicus, Paracalanus parvus, Pseudocalanus elongatus, and Temora longicornis between 2000 and 2005 at the time series station Helgoland Roads, southern North Sea.

We observed no significant effect of food (measured as phytoplankton carbon content) with size of adult females. Moreover, in none of the species investigated was prosome length significantly correlated with temperature when considering the whole year. Instead, all species had a period of temperature-related size, but for the size distribution during the rest of the year we distinguished two groups of species.