Zooplankton analysis represents a bottleneck in marine ecology studies due to the difficulty to obtain zooplankton data. The last decades have seen the intense development of zooplankton imaging systems, to increase the zooplankton data spatio-temporal resolution as well as enabling the combination of size, taxonomy, and functional traits in aquatic ecology studies. Here, we propose a benchmark between the ZooScan, a commercially available, laboratory-based scanner, which analyses zooplankton preserved samples, and the ZooCAM, an in-flow imaging system designed for on-board live zooplankton imaging. Sixty-one zooplankton samples collected over the Bay of Biscay in environments ranging from estuarine to offshore blue waters were imaged with both instruments. Zooplankton Normalized Biovolume-Size Spectra slopes, mean sizes, abundances, and zooplankton community biogeographical patterns were computed for each instrument and compared at the taxonomic group, the sampling stations and the Bay of Biscay scales. Both instruments produced similar zooplankton variables by stations and by taxa and described similar zooplankton community compositions and biogeographical patterns, on the large mesozooplankton size range, i.e., [0.3–3.39] mm ESD. We conclude that the ZooCAM and the ZooScan data can be combined to generate long term or spatially resolved zooplankton time series. Our study shows that benchmarking imaging instruments or techniques (1) offers a robust assessment of interoperability between instruments, mitigating possible instrumental biases, and (2) may be of great interest in the case of instrumental obsolescence or breakdown, to choose the most conservative replacement solution in a long term time series framework.

中文翻译：

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ZooScan 和 ZooCAM 浮游动物成像系统具有可比性：比斯开湾浮游动物的基准

由于难以获得浮游动物数据，浮游动物分析成为海洋生态学研究的瓶颈。在过去的几十年里，浮游动物成像系统得到了迅猛的发展，以提高浮游动物数据的时空分辨率，并使水生生态研究中的大小、分类和功能特征相结合。在这里，我们提出了 ZooScan（一种商用实验室扫描仪，用于分析浮游动物保存样本）和 ZooCAM（一种专为船上活体浮游动物成像而设计的流式成像系统）之间的基准。使用这两种仪器对在比斯开湾从河口到近海蓝色水域等环境中收集的 61 个浮游动物样本进行了成像。计算每个仪器的浮游动物归一化生物体积大小光谱斜率、平均大小、丰度和浮游动物群落生物地理模式，并在分类组、采样站和比斯开湾尺度上进行比较。两种仪器按站和分类群产生了相似的浮游动物变量，并描述了在大中型浮游动物尺寸范围（即[0.3–3.39] mm ESD）上相似的浮游动物群落组成和生物地理模式。我们得出的结论是，ZooCAM 和 ZooScan 数据可以结合起来生成长期或空间解析的浮游动物时间序列。我们的研究表明，对成像仪器或技术进行基准测试（1）可以对仪器之间的互操作性进行可靠的评估，减少可能的仪器偏差，（2）在仪器陈旧或故障的情况下可能会非常有意义，以选择最保守的替代品长期时间序列框架中的解决方案。