Coastal tropical zooplankton: Patterns and processes over spatial scales

Previous studies on the abundance/biomass and species distribution of coastal tropical zooplankton have been done at a few stations, making them unsuitable to study spatial patterns. Whereas several physical and biological processes have been found to generate and maintain the spatial patterns of coastal tropical zooplankton, the scales of spatial dependency of these processes and their effects on zooplankton spatial variability have not been investigated. In this paper, we review current research on zooplankton spatial structure and the invoked generating processes in coastal marine environments. Our aim is to highlight the importance of scale, and of a multiscale approach for the study of zooplankton spatial variability, and promote arguments supporting this type of study to understand community dynamics and the interaction of zooplankton with other planktonic and nektonic compartments — and, as a result, the implications for the structure and function of coastal tropical ecosystems.