Aurélie Dessier

Office français de la biodiversité

Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes are increasingly used to study the trophic relationships in marine ecosystems. The pilchard Sardina pilchardus is a key species among small pelagic fish in the functioning of marine pelagic food webs in the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean. Pilchards were caught in 2014 in the Bay of Biscay and were maintained during...

Which information provided by helminth parasites about feeding patterns of their host and free-living biodiversity in ecosystem? Parasitological research was made in all the organs and tissues of 52 E. encrasicolus and 49 S. pilchardus caught in spring 2012 in the Bay of Biscay by PELGAS (PELagique GAScogne, an accoustic survey to estimate the aver...

Small pelagic fish represent an essential link between lower and upper trophic levels in marine pelagic ecosystems and often support important fisheries. In the Bay of Biscay in the north-east Atlantic, no obvious on trolling factors have yet been described that explain observed fluctuations in European sardine Sardina pilchardus and European ancho...

From 2000 to 2016, substantial changes in biomass and community structure of small pelagic fish and mesozooplankton have been reported in the Bay of Biscay. Since significant relationships have been found between phytoplankton chlorophyll a and mesozooplankton as well as between phytoplankton chlorophyll a and shifts in sardine body condition, it w...

This study aims at (1) experimentally estimating first sexual maturation of the European sardine S. pilchardus, (2) using the results to calibrate existing bioenergetic models. During the 183 days-experiment, fish growth and body condition were assessed by biometry, and gonads were weighed when present. Age, total length and wet weight at first mat...

Seven South Pacific anguillid eel species live from New Guinea to French Polynesia, but their spawning areas and life histories are mostly unknown despite previous sampling surveys. A July–October 2016 research cruise was conducted to study the spawning areas and times, and larval distributions of South Pacific anguillid eels, which included a shor...

Trophic ecology is the study of feeding interactions and food acquisition by organisms. It includes the causes and consequences of those behaviours at all levels of biological organisation. As a field of research, it crosses many disciplinary boundaries and provides knowledge that is pertinent to many other areas of ecology. Here we list and catego...

Mesozooplankton can be considered the most important secondary producers in marine food webs because they hold an intermediate position between the phytoplankton assemblage and the upper trophic levels. They also are a robust indicator of climatic and hydrological conditions. We conducted an analysis of the interannual variability of the spring mes...

Coccolithophore blooms occur regularly from April to June in the Bay of Biscay where they have been observed for many years from ocean-colour imagery thanks to the ability of their calcite plates to scatter light. They are easily depicted on interpolated images of non-algal Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) derived from satellite reflectance data...

To explore some aspects of mesozooplankton functional diversity, this study quantified energy density during the springtime in the Bay of Biscay both between different species and between different size-classes. Energy densities of copepod species (Centropages typicus, Anomalocera patersoni, Calanus helgolandicus, and Labidocera wollastoni), as wel...

The effects of Global Climate Change (GCC) on marine diversity are now well documented. GCC has caused changes in species abundance, phenological, and biogeographic shifts, altering in turn the whole marine diversity. Here, we investigated year-to-year (1998-2011) changes in the diversity of copepods in an estuarine polyhaline area (Gironde estuary...

To implement a new view point on mesozooplankton features in trophic studies framework, the present study aims at quantifying the energy density of mesozooplankton at the species level but also spatially. Samples were collected at springtime in the Bay of Biscay considering both taxonomic and size-classes diversity during PELGAS surveys in 2013 and...

Aim The movement patterns of marine top predators are likely to reflect responses to prey distributions, which themselves can be influenced by factors such as climate and fisheries. The critically endangered Balearic shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus has shown a recent northwards shift in non‐breeding distribution, tentatively linked to changing for...

Parasitological data are increasingly used to provide information on host populations, trophic interactions and free-living biodiversity. In the present study, we investigated parasitic helminths in Sardina pilchardus and Engraulis encrasicolus from the Bay of Biscay (north-east Atlantic). In addition, helminths infecting E. encrasicolus were revie...

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