IMIS

This volume of the REVIZEE Documents Series presents, in atlas form, the principal groups of the zooplankton community recorded during the Program to Evaluate the Sustainable Potential of Living Resources in the Exclusive Economic Zone (REVIZEE) - SCORE Central. The specimens were collected during the Central III, Central IV and Bahia 1 campaigns, in the period from 1998 through 2000. The collections were made between the Real River in Bahia (12 degrees S) and Cape São Tomé in Rio de Janeiro (22oS), including the seamounts of the Vitória-Trindade and Martin Vaz chain. The strategy for the plankton study, established by the National Project Proposal, had as its objective to characterize the pelagic environment, in order to evaluate the fishery potential of the continental shelf and slope of the Brazilian EEZ. This atlas is a product of this Program, and focuses on the diagnosis of the taxa identified in these samples. Atlases to aid in the identification of zooplanktonic organisms have been developed for several oceans. The two atlases previously produced for the Southwest Atlantic constitute fundamental contributions to knowledge of the marine zooplankton. However, in Brazil no atlas has yet been composed for the identification of these organisms. Six zoological groups were studied: Subclass Copepoda (70 species), Order Decapoda (30 taxa), Phylum Chaetognatha (17 species), Class Appendicularia (15 species), Order Salpida (8 species) and Order Doliolida (4 species). Several of these taxa are cited for the first time for the Brazilian coast, and the distributions of others have been extended to the southeast coast. This atlas contains general information about the zooplankton, the study area, and the collection methods. The results are presented in the form of an identification plate for each species, containing the diagnosis, ecology, and distribution, the material studied, and the literature sources used for its identification. In this context, this atlas aims to contribute to the identification of the zooplankton of Brazilian coastal waters and to knowledge of the marine pelagic biodiversity. It is intended to continue the present work, completing it with other zoological groups not treated in this study.