diversity Article Zooplankton Abundance and Diversity in the Tropical and Subtropical Ocean Ma Luz Fernández de Puelles 1,*, Magdalena Gazá 1, Miguel Cabanellas-Reboredo 1 , Ma del Mar Santandreu 1, Xabier Irigoien 2,3, Juan Ignacio González-Gordillo 4 , Carlos M. Duarte 5 and Santiago Hernández-León 6 1 Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centro de Baleares, Muelle de Poniente s/n., 07015 Palma de Mallorca, Spain;
[email protected] (M.G.);
[email protected] (M.C.-R.);
[email protected] (M.d.M.S.) 2 AZTI-Marine Research, Herrera Kaia, Portualdea z/g, 20110 Pasaia (Gipuzkoa), Spain;
[email protected] 3 IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, 48013 Bilbao, Spain 4 Facultad de Ciencias del Mar y Ambientales, Universidad de Cádiz, Campus Río San Pedro, 11510 Puerto Real Cádiz, Spain;
[email protected] 5 Red Sea Research Center (RSRC) and Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia;
[email protected] 6 Instituto de Oceanografía y Cambio Global, IOCAG, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, ULPGC, Unidad Asociada ULPGC-CSIC, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain;
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[email protected] Received: 27 September 2019; Accepted: 21 October 2019; Published: 23 October 2019 Abstract: The abundance and composition of zooplankton down to 3000 m depth was studied in the subtropical and tropical latitudes across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans (35 ◦N–40 ◦S). Samples were collected from December 2010 to June 2011 during the Malaspina Circumnavigation Expedition. Usually, low abundances were observed with the highest values found in the North Pacific Ocean, Benguela, and off Mauritania, and the lowest in the South Pacific Ocean.