Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Blackwell Publishing for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Change Biology 16 (2010): 1137-1144, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.01960.x.
Description:
The macroecological relationships between marine phytoplankton total cell density,
community size structure and temperature have lacked a theoretical explanation. The tiniest
members of this planktonic group comprise cyanobacteria and eukaryotic algae smaller
than 2 μm in diameter, collectively known as picophytoplankton. We combine here two
ecological rules, the temperature-size relationship with the allometric size-scaling of
population abundance to explain a remarkably consistent pattern of increasing
picophytoplankton biomass with temperature over the -0.6 to 22ºC range in a merged
dataset obtained in the eastern and western temperate North Atlantic Ocean across a diverse
range of environmental conditions. Our results show that temperature alone was able to
explain 73% of the variance in the relative contribution of small cells to total phytoplankton
biomass regardless of differences in trophic status or inorganic nutrient loading. Our
analysis predicts a gradual shift towards smaller primary producers in a warmer ocean.
Since the fate of photosynthesized organic carbon largely depends on phytoplankton size
we anticipate future alterations in the functioning of oceanic ecosystems.
Description:
X.A.G.M., A.C.-D. and Á.L.-U. acknowledge the financial support of research
grants VARIPLACA (REN2001-0345/MAR), PERPLAN (CTM2006-04854/MAR) and the
RADIALES time-series program of the Instituto Español de Oceanografía. W.K.W.L. was
supported by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans Strategic Science Fund in
the Ocean Climate Program and the Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program. This work was
partially funded by Theme 6 of the EU Seventh Framework Programme through the Marine
Ecosystem Evolution in a Changing Environment (MEECE No 212085) Collaborative
Project.
Keywords:
Temperature
;
Phytoplankton
;
Cell size
;
Cell abundance
;
Picophytoplankton
;
Allometric relationships
;
Ocean warming
;
North Atlantic
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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