Patterns of variability in ichthyoplankton occurrence and abundance in Biscayne Bay, Florida☆

Abstract Within-day variability in ichthyoplankton and microzooplankton abundances was examined at a single station in Biscayne Bay using replicate tows of 61-cm bongo nets and Niskin bottles to determine if patchiness occurred on the 10–1000 m scale and on the minutes to hours time scale. Fish eggs and larvae often were patchy but copepod nauplii, the predominant food of larvae, usually were randomly distributed at the scales examined and over the 3.15 m-depth water column. Mean patchiness index values were of similar magnitude for fish eggs and larvae but fish eggs were patchy more often than were larvae. Individual taxa of larvae had extremely high patchiness index values on some dates. Variability in fish egg catches often reflected increasing or decreasing abundance trends during the 2.5h sampling period while fish larvae catches often appeared to be clumped within the repetitive series of tows. There was no tendency for patchiness to be correlated among taxa on collection dates nor was it correlated with abundances or wind speeds. Patchiness indices of bay anchovy Anchoa mitchilli eggs and larvae were not significantly correlated, indicating little concordance in tendency to be aggregated, suggesting that distributions were influenced by biological processes related to spawning of adults and behaviour of larvae, in addition to physical processes. Although ichthyoplankton patchiness often did exist at the 10–1000 m scale, on many days ichthyoplankton was uniformly or randomly distributed. Copepod nauplii were abundant ( x =90.41 −1 ), randomly distributed on most dates, and apparently readily available as fish larvae food in Biscayne Bay.