Description: The influence of winter on the selection of dominant taxa for the phytoplankton spring bloom was studied in batch culture experiments. Different natural phytoplankton assemblages from different phases of the temperate zone winter were exposed to varying periods of darkness (0, 6/7, 13 and 19 weeks) followed by a re-exposure to saturating light intensity for 14 days to experimentally simulate the onset of spring. The results showed that dark incubation has a strong effect on shaping the phytoplankton community composition. Many taxa disappeared in the absolute darkness. Dark survival ability might be an important contributing factor for the success of diatoms in spring. Different phytoplankton starting assemblages were dominated by the same bloom-forming diatoms, Skeletonema marinoi and Thalassosira spp., after dark incubation for only 6 weeks, irrespective of the high dissimilarities between phytoplankton communities. The growth capacity of surviving phytoplankton is almost unimpaired by darkness. Similar growth rates as that before darkness could be resumed for the surviving taxa with a potential lag time of 1–7 days dependent on taxon and the duration of darkness.

Description: Highlights: • Ocean acidification increases phytoplankton standing stock. • This increase is more pronounced in smaller-sized taxa. • Primary consumers reac differently depending on nutrient availability. • Bacteria and micro-heterotrophs benefited under limiting conditions. • In general, heterotrophs are negatively affected at nutrient replete periods. Abstract: In situ mesocosm experiments on the effect of ocean acidification (OA) are an important tool for investigating potential OA-induced changes in natural plankton communities. In this study we combined results from various in-situ mesocosm studies in two different ocean regions (Arctic and temperate waters) to reveal general patterns of plankton community shifts in response to OA and how these changes are modulated by inorganic nutrient availability. Overall, simulated OA caused an increase in phytoplankton standing stock, which was more pronounced in smaller-sized taxa. This effect on primary producers was channelled differently into heterotroph primary consumers depending on the inorganic nutrient availability. Under limiting conditions, bacteria and micro-heterotrophs benefited with inconsistent responses of larger heterotrophs. During nutrient replete periods, heterotrophs were in general negatively affected, although there was an increase of some mesozooplankton developmental stages (i.e. copepodites). We hypothesize that changes in phytoplankton size distribution and community composition could be responsible for these food web responses.

Description: Highlights • Increasing influence of multiple environmental drivers produces changes on the temporal variability of species. • The intensity and hierarchy of drivers acting upon organisms within alternative regimes of variability may differ. • We identified regimes of variability of phytoplankton and depicted cascading effects of multiple drivers in each period. • The number of factors driving the response of phytoplankton increased along time and produced the erosion of productivity patterns. • The hierarchy and interactions of drivers changed over time, revealing that management policies require constant update. Abstract Estuaries are among the most valuable aquatic systems by their services to human welfare. However, increasing human activities at the watershed along with the pressure of climate change are fostering the co-occurrence of multiple environmental drivers, and warn of potential negative impacts on estuaries resources. At present, no clear understanding of how coastal ecosystems will respond to the non-stationary effect of multiple drivers. Here we analysed the temporal interaction among multiple environmental drivers and their changing priority on shaping phytoplankton response in the Bahía Blanca Estuary, SW Atlantic Ocean. The interaction among environmental drivers and the number of significant direct and indirect effects on chlorophyll concentration increased over time in concurrence with enhanced anthropogenic stress, changing winter climate and wind patterns. Over the period 1978–1993, proximal variables such as nutrients, water temperature and salinity, showed a dominant effect on chlorophyll, whereas in more recent years (1993–2009) climate signals (SAM and ENSO) boosted indirect effects through its influence on precipitation, wind, water temperature and turbidity. Turbidity emerged as the dominant driver of chlorophyll while in recent years acted synergistically with the concentration of dissolved nitrogen. As a result, chlorophyll concentration showed a significant negative trend and a loss of seasonal peaks reflecting a pronounced reorganisation of the phytoplankton community. We stress the need to account for the changing priority of drivers to understand, and eventually forecast, biological responses under projected scenarios of global anthropogenic change.

Description: Aurelia aurita (Linneaus, 1758) is a cosmopolitan scyphozoan, probably the most investigated jellyfish in temperate and highly productive coastal ecosystems. Despite a prominent top-down control in plankton food webs, a mechanistic understanding of A. aurita population dynamics and trophic interactions has been barely addressed. Here we develop a food web dynamic model to assess A. aurita role in the seasonal plankton dynamics of the Kiel Fjord, southwestern Baltic Sea. The model couples low trophic level dynamics, based on a classical Nutrient Phytoplankton Zooplankton Detritus (NPZD) model, to a stage-resolved copepod model (referencing Pseudocalanus sp.) and a jellyfish model (A. aurita ephyra and medusa) as consumers and predators, respectively. Simulations showed the relevance of high abundances of A. aurita, which appear related with warm winter temperatures, promoting a shift from a copepod-dominated food web to a ciliate and medusa dominated one. The model captured the intraspecific competition triggered by the medusae abundance and characterized by a negative relationship between population density and individual size/weight. Our results provide a mechanistic understanding of an emergent trait such as size shaping the food web functioning, driving predation rates and population dynamics of A. aurita, driving its sexual reproductive strategy at the end of the pelagic phase.

Description: Light and nutrients are essential resources for phytoplankton growth and considered to shape the size structure and other morphometric traits (surface:volume ratio, deviation from spherical shape) of phytoplankton communities. If morphometric traits influence the growth and resource use, shifts by one of the two factors should influence the capability to utilize the other factor. We performed a two-step experiment, where a natural phytoplankton community was first exposed to three different light levels (supposed to be limiting, saturating and slightly inhibiting for the majority of species) and grown until stationary phase. Then, the pre-conditioned communities were split into two nutrient treatments (control and saturating nutrient pulse) and again grown until stationary phase under the medium light intensity. During the experimental light phase, community mean cell-size increased with light, but surface:volume ratio and deviation from spherical shape decreased. Moreover, in response to the following nutrient pulse, the low light pre-conditioned communities showed the highest initial growth rates in response to the nutrient pulse. The high light pre-conditioned communities showed the highest conversion of the nutrient pulse into biomass during the stationary phase. These results demonstrate how the imprint of one environmental factor on trait distribution influences the ability to cope with another.

Description: Global warming and ocean acidification are among the most important stressors for aquatic ecosystems in the future. To investigate their direct and indirect effects on a near-natural plankton community, a multiple-stressor approach is needed. Hence, we set up mesocosms in a full-factorial design to study the effects of both warming and high CO2 on a Baltic Sea autumn plankton community, concentrating on the impacts on microzooplankton (MZP). MZP abundance, biomass, and species composition were analysed over the course of the experiment. We observed that warming led to a reduced time-lag between the phytoplankton bloom and an MZP biomass maximum. MZP showed a significantly higher growth rate and an earlier biomass peak in the warm treatments while the biomass maximum was not affected. Increased pCO2 did not result in any significant effects on MZP biomass, growth rate, or species composition irrespective of the temperature, nor did we observe any significant interactions between CO2 and temperature. We attribute this to the high tolerance of this estuarine plankton community to fluctuations in pCO2, often resulting in CO2 concentrations higher than the predicted end-of-century concentration for open oceans. In contrast, warming can be expected to directly affect MZP and strengthen its coupling with phytoplankton by enhancing its grazing pressure.

Description: The Red Sea features a natural environmental gradient characterized by increasing water temperature, nutrient and chlorophyll a concentrations from North to South. The aim of this study was to assess the relationships between ecohydrography, particulate organic matter (POM) and coral reef biota that are poorly understood by means of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotopes. Herbivorous, planktivorous and carnivorous fishes, zooplankton, soft corals (Alcyonidae), and bivalves (Tridacna squamosa)were a priori defined as biota guilds. Environmental samples (nutrients, chlorophyll a), oceanographic data (salinity, temperature), POMand biotawere collected at eight coral reefs between 28°31′ N and 16°31′ N. Isotopic niches of guilds separated in δ13C and δ15N isotopic niche spaces and were significantly correlated with environmental factors at latitudinal scale. Dietary end member contributionswere estimated using the Bayesian isotope mixingmodel SIAR. POMand zooplankton 15N enrichment suggested influences by urban run-off in the industrialized central region of the Red Sea. Both δ15N and their relative trophic positions (RTPs) tend to increase southwards, but urban runoff offsets the natural environmental gradient in the central region of the Red Sea toward higher δ15N and RTPs. The present study reveals that consumer δ13C and δ15N in Red Sea coral reefs are influenced primarily by the latitudinal environmental gradient and localized urban runoff. This study illustrates the importance of ecohydrography when interpreting trophic relationships from stable isotopes in Red Sea coral reefs.

Description: Highlights: • We used indoor mesocosms to test the impact of warming on plankton communities. • Different stages of phytoplankton bloom were analysed. • Increased temperature and zooplankton grazing had similar effects on phytoplankton. • Warming and increased zooplankton density decreased phytoplankton richness. • Warming and increased zooplankton density increased phytoplankton evenness. Recent climate warming is expected to affect phytoplankton biomass and diversity in marine ecosystems. Temperature can act directly on phytoplankton (e.g. rendering physiological processes) or indirectly due to changes in zooplankton grazing activity. We tested experimentally the impact of increased temperature on natural phytoplankton and zooplankton communities using indoor mesocosms and combined the results from different experimental years applying a meta-analytic approach. We divided our analysis into three bloom phases to define the strength of temperature and zooplankton impacts on phytoplankton in different stages of bloom development. Within the constraints of an experiment, our results suggest that increased temperature and zooplankton grazing have similar effects on phytoplankton diversity, which are most apparent in the post-bloom phase, when zooplankton abundances reach the highest values. Moreover, we observed changes in zooplankton composition in response to warming and initial conditions, which can additionally affect phytoplankton diversity, because changing feeding preferences of zooplankton can affect phytoplankton community structure. We conclude that phytoplankton diversity is indirectly affected by temperature in the post-bloom phase through changing zooplankton composition and grazing activities. Before and during the bloom, however, these effects seem to be overruled by temperature enhanced bottom-up processes such as phytoplankton nutrient uptake.

Description: Inorganic dissolved macronutrient (nitrogen, N, and phosphorus, P) supply to surface waters in the eastern tropical South Pacific is influenced by expanding oxygen minimum zones, since N loss occurs due to microbial processes under anoxic conditions while P is increasingly released from the shelf sediments. To investigate the impact of decreasing N:P supply ratios in the Peruvian Upwelling, we conducted nutrient manipulation experiments using a shipboard mesocosm setup with a natural phytoplankton community. In a first experiment, either N or P or no nutrients were added with mesozooplankton present or absent. In a second experiment, initial nutrient concentrations were adjusted to four N:P ratios ranging from 2.5 to 16 using two "high N" and two "high P" levels in combination (i.e., +N, +P, +N and P, no addition). Over six and seven days, respectively, microalgal biomass development as well as nutrient uptake was monitored. Phytoplankton biomass strongly responded to N addition, in both mesozooplankton-grazed and not grazed treatments. The developing diatom bloom in the "high N" exceeded that in the "low N" treatments by a factor of two. No modulation of the total biomass by P-addition was observed, however, species-specific responses were more variable. Notably, some organisms were able to benefit from low N:P fertilization ratios, especially Heterosigma sp. and Phaeocystis globosa which are notorious for forming blooms that are toxic or inadequate for mesozooplankton nutrition. After the decline of the diatom bloom, the relative contribution of unsaturated fatty acid to the lipid content of seston was positively correlated to diatom biomass in the peak bloom, indicating that positive effects of diatom blooms on food quality of the protist community to higher trophic levels remain even after the phytoplankton biomass was incorporated by grazers. Our results indicate an overall N-limitation of the system, especially in the case of dominating diatoms, which were able to immediately utilize the available nitrate (within two days) and develop a biomass maximum within three days of incubation. After the decline of diatom biomass, detection of the cyanobacterial marker pigment aphanizophyll indicated the occurrence of diazotrophs, especially in those enclosures initially provided with high N supply. This was surprising, as diazotrophs are thought to play a role in compensating to some extent the N deficit above OMZs in the succession of phytoplankton after an upwelling event

Description: The diatom Thalassiosira minima was first recorded in the Baha Blanca Estuary in 1992. In 19921993 it exhibited a broad seasonal occurrence. A recent survey (20062007) showed a seasonal appearance restricted mainly to summer together with a greater relative abundance within the phytoplankton. A close connection was found with warmer, more saline and highly turbid conditions experienced in recent summers in the estuary. Whether these changes will impact the estuary trophic dynamics remains an open question.