Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Sea Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/seares Summer micro- and mesozooplankton from the largest reef system of the South Atlantic Ocean (Abrolhos, Brazil): Responses to coast proximity Lucas Guedes Pereira Figueirêdo a, ⁎ , Pedro Augusto Mendes de Castro Melo a , Mauro de Melo Júnior b , Tâmara de Almeida e Silva c , Rodrigo Leão de Moura d , Fabiano Lopes Thompson d , Sigrid Neumann Leitão a a Departamento de Oceanografia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil b Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil c Departamento de Educação, Universidade Estadual da Bahia, Paulo Afonso, Bahia, Brazil d Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Zooplankton Abrolhos reefs Biodiversity Distribution ABSTRACT Zooplankton samples were collected in summer and in three distinct Neotropical areas (the coastal reef arc, the outer reef arc and the Abrolhos Archipelago). Two stations in each sampling area were established (a reef station and an outer station) to sampling zooplanktonic assemblage with two different mesh sizes (64- and 200-μm plankton nets). Approximately 110 taxa were identified, and the assemblages from the two nets were sig- nificantly different. Zooplankton abundances were three orders of magnitude higher in the 64-μm net samples with an average abundance of 217,000 ± 93,418 ind m -3 (64-μm net) and 189 ± 122 ind m -3 (200-μm net). A permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) of the zooplankton community structure re- vealed significant differences between all three regions and showed a heterogeneous distribution of these ani- mals, even though no significant differences were observed in terms of abundance for both net catches (two-way ANOVA, P > 0,05). SIMPER analyses showed that most highly abundant taxa occurred in all sampling areas. Though, some other taxa were clearly identified as characteristic of a particular area by their relative frequency, rather than relative abundance. It is hypothesized that variations in suspended particle concentration play an important role in the observed differences in community composition. Our results suggest that the pelagic components of these reef zooplankton assemblages may be as important as demersal zooplankters to benthic- pelagic coupling. Because the much higher abundance of the microzooplankton assemblages compared to the mesozooplankton is a common feature of reef communities, the studies that use only coarse nets miss assessing the contribution of a large and important portion of the reef zooplankton assemblage and therefore misinterpret the community as a whole. 1. Introduction Coral reefs are limited to tropical oceans and cover only 0.1% of the surface of the earth, yet they have major consequences for global marine biodiversity. Reefs provides habitat for remarkably diverse an- imal phyla with characteristic distribution patterns and composition (Kohn, 1997). These patterns reflect the effect of several processes, which are largely characterized as niche-based (Armstrong and McGehee, 1980; Leibold, 1995) or determined by dispersal limitation (Hubbell, 2001). It is importance to strive in the study of groups that are important to maintaining environmental resilience (Walker, 1992). Among these, zooplankton play major roles in most ecosystem processes and are essential links in food webs. In addition, they also exhibit a tremendous diversity of traits, ecological strategies and con- sequently impact other trophic levels in the cycling of materials and energy (Litchman et al., 2013). Zooplankton are probably the best studied component of planktonic communities of reef ecosystems because they have been studied since the 1930s (Sorokin, 1990a). In most of these pioneer studies (Edmondson, 1937; Farran, 1949; Russel, 1934), zooplankton were collected only during the daytime and the migratory behavior of this community was unknown, which led to a misunderstanding that reef zooplankton consist mostly of planktonic organisms of adjacent waters passing over the reef (Emery, 1968; Johannes et al., 1970). However, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seares.2018.08.002 Received 19 December 2017; Received in revised form 25 May 2018; Accepted 9 August 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: figueiredo@lgp.net.br (L.G.P. Figueirêdo). Journal of Sea Research 141 (2018) 37–46 Available online 10 August 2018 1385-1101/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T