Illuminating the planktonic stages of salmon lice: a unique fluorescence signal for rapid identification of a rare copepod in zooplankton assemblages.

The Excitation Emission Matrix (EEM) measurements were taken with Shimadzu's proprietary software ‘LabSolutions RF’. All files are in the exported csv format with columns representing the excitation wavelengths and rows the emission wavelengths. Wavelengths range from 200-600 nm with a 2 nm increment. Fluorescence intensity was influenced by the fluctuating number of animals in the path of the excitation beam during the 5 minute measurement. We compensated for this artefact by repeating measurements of each sample five times, calculating the mean, and applying a smoothing function which found the median value within 10 nm. The fluorescence intensity was further normalized on a 0 to 1 scale by dividing intensity by the maximum fluorescence within each EEM measurement.

Supplemental Table 1. The metadata of EEM measurements. The measurements were used for the spectrum section analysis and correspond to those depicted in Figures 2, 3, 4, & 5. See sections 3.1, 3.1.1, & 3.1.2. The Sample column indicates which lab culture cohort the sea lice came from (BGO*), which wild caught fish sample they came from (WC*), or the sampling date of non-target copepods (DDMMYY). The filename of each mean measurement is listed and indicates the first of 5 repeated measurements. Corresponding files can be found in the deposited.csv files at Zendo. In those files, data columns represent the excitation wavelengths, 200nm to 600nm increasing in 2 nm increments. Likewise, the rows represent the emission wavelengths. NaN’s are present where scattering layers were removed. All fluorescence intensity values are normalized to the maximum within each EEM.