Overview of ZooMSS
The Zooplankton Model of Size Spectra (ZooMSS) is a functional size-spectrum model of the marine ecosystem (following Heneghan et al. 2016) to resolve phytoplankton, nine zooplankton functional groups (heterotrophic flagellates and ciliates, omnivorous and carnivorous copepods, larvaceans, euphausiids, salps, chaetognaths and jellyfish) and three size-based fish groups. Zooplankton functional groups are resolved using their body-size ranges, size-based feeding characteristics and carbon content, and the zooplankton community emerges from the model across global environmental gradients, depending on the functional traits of the different groups.
We developed the Zooplankton Model of Size Spectra ZooMSS based on the prototype of Heneghan et al. (2016). ZooMSS uses the functional size-spectrum framework (Blanchard et al., 2017) to resolve the body size ranges, size-based feeding characteristics and carbon content of nine zooplankton groups and three fish groups. The model supports time-varying environmental conditions enabling studies of seasonal cycles, climate change scenarios, and ecosystem responses to environmental variability.
ZooMSS represents the marine ecosystem as three communities: phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish. The zooplankton community consists of nine of the most abundant zooplankton groups, and the fish community was made up of a small, medium and large group. Dynamics of the phytoplankton are not explicitly resolved in the model, rather the mean size structure of the phytoplankton community is estimated directly from satellite chlorophyll a observations (Brewin et al., 2010; Barnes et al., 2011; Hirata et al., 2011). Abundances of the zooplankton and fish communities are driven by size-dependent processes of growth and mortality, with the temporal dynamics of each functional group governed by separate second-order McKendrick-von Foerster equations.
Installation
You can install the development version of zoomss from GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("MathMarEcol/zoomss")Publications
Heneghan, R.F., Everett, J.D., Blanchard, J.L., Richardson, A.J., 2016. Zooplankton Are Not Fish: Improving Zooplankton Realism in Size-Spectrum Models Mediates Energy Transfer in Food Webs. Front. Mar. Sci. 3, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2016.00201
Heneghan, R.F., Everett, J.D., Sykes, P., Batten, S.D., Edwards, M., Takahashi, K., Suthers, I.M., Blanchard, J.L., Richardson, A.J., in review, A global size-spectrum model of the marine ecosystem that resolves zooplankton composition. Ecological Modelling
Getting Help
If you encounter problems running the model, raise an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/MathMarEcol/ZoopSizeSpectraModel/issues
If you find errors or want to improve the model, we’d love you to make the changes and submit a pull request for us to review and approve.