Zooplankton feeding behavioral signatures in the morphology of macroscale prey spatial distribution

The problem of pattern and scale remains a central problem in ecology, bridging fundamental and applied questions. Marine microbial communities are a case in point. For instance, to understand the role of zooplankton in oceanic biogeochemistry, their response to changes in environmental conditions, and the implications for ecosystem services (e.g., fisheries), it is critical to understand zooplankton trophic interactions and how they change in a rapidly changing climate. This understanding, however, remains elusive because, unlike for phytoplankton, for which remote sensing of macroscale patterns can provide insight into their microscale dynamics and community composition, obtaining this information for zooplankton largely rests on quantifying the difficult-to-monitor microscale interactions among millions of individuals with different behaviors, and between individuals and their environment. Here, we investigate whether it is possible to obtain indirect information on zooplankton from the macroscale spatial distribution of their prey. To tackle this “problem of scale”, we develop a rigorous coarse-graining methodology that connects individual-level properties with macroscale spatial patterns. We demonstrate that the shape of the prey spatial distribution can indeed encode information about zooplankton feeding behavior and community dynamics. Specifically, we predict a change in dominant feeding behavior—from non-motile to motile feeding—as one moves from areas of high to areas of low prey density. These results thus suggest a novel application for remote sensing approaches: the potential tracking of consumer behavioral signatures in the large-scale patterns of the resource. Importantly, the scaling-up methodology that we developed to check whether those signatures exist is general, and can be used to link scales rigorously and systematically in any system in which the complexity of individual dynamics makes connecting scales intractable.