A Preliminary Comparison of the Trophic Structure of some Large Marine Ecosystems Rainer Froese IfM

Contents Introduction Data sources Preliminary results Discussion

Introduction Ecosystem Management is Needed Understanding of Ecosystems is Limited Generalizations are Needed Comparative Approach

Data Sources FishBase 2000 used for Fish Data >>Table>>Table FAO Catalog and Pauly et al used for Marine Mammals Data Div. Books used for Cephalopod Data Special Tools: Trophic Pyramids >>Troph>>Troph Special Tools: TrophLab >>TrophLab>>TrophLab

Number of Fish Species per Trophic Level: I

Number of Fish Species per Trophic Level: II

Number of Fish Species per Trophic Level: III

Number of Species per Trophic Level: IV

Number of Species per Trophic Level: V

Mean Size of Fish Species by Trophic Level: I

Mean Size of Fish Species by Trophic Level: II

Mean Size of Fish Species by Trophic Level: III

Mean Size of Fish Species by Trophic Level: IV

Number of Species by Trophic Level: North Sea

Number of Species: North Sea

Global Number of Species by Trophic Level Copepods (8000)

Mean Size of Species by Trophic Level

Marine vs. Freshwater Fishes

Marine vs. Freshwater Fishes II

Conclusions Trophic signatures appear suitable for characterisation, comparison, and grouping of ecosystems More data for other groups (birds, cephalopods, crustaceans, benthos and zooplankton) are needed

Acknowledgements Thanks are due to Uwe Piatkowski for help with cephalopods Eli Agbayani for programming the Trophic Pyramids routine Daniel Pauly, Deng Palomares, Pasky Sa-a and Suzette Gutierrez for trophic data on fishes