Seasonal vertical strategies in a high-Arctic coastal zooplankton community

We studied the larger (>1000 μm) size fraction of zooplankton in an Arctic coastal water community in Billefjorden, Svalbard (78°40′ N), Norway, in order to describe seasonal vertical distributions of the dominant taxa in relation to environmental variability. Calanus spp. numerically dominated the herbivores; Aglantha digitale, Mertensia ovum, Beroë cucumis, and Parasagitta elegans were the dominant carnivores. Omnivores and detritivores were numerically less important. Descent to deeper regions of the water column (>100 m) between August and October, and ascent to the shallower region (