Category Archives: Research

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Phytoplankton Diversity versus Productivity in the Ocean

Diversity and Biogeography, ,

by Sergio Vallina
Dept of Marine Biology and Oceanography,  Institute of Marine Sciences, Barcelona

How does species richness vary with ecosystem productivity for marine phytoplankton? This question has fascinated biological oceanographers for decades. Phytoplankton communities are composed of many species of unicellular micro-algae. They are at the base of the marine trophic foodweb, growing and surviving by means of photosythesis by fixing CO2; a process known as primary production. Continue reading Phytoplankton Diversity versus Productivity in the Ocean →

Publication

Vallina, S.M., M.J. Follows, S. Dutkiewicz, J. Montoya, P. Cermeno, and M. Loreau (2014),
Global relationship between phytoplankton diversity and productivity in the ocean, Nature Communications, 5, 4299, doi: 10.1038/ncomms5299

Publication

Prowe, A.E.F., M. Pahlow, S. Dutkiewicz, and A. Oschlies (2014), How important is diversity to capture environmental change responses in ecosystem models? Biogeosciences, 11, 3397–3407, 2014, doi: 10.5194/bg-11-3397-2014

Publication:

Barton, A.D., B.A. Ward, R.G. Williams, and M.J. Follows (2014), The impact of fine-scale turbulence on phytoplankton community structure. Limnology and Oceanography: Fluids and Environments, 4, 34-49, doi: 10.1215/21573689-2651533

 

MIT scientists discovered an amazing amount of diversity among a population of marine microbes living in a few drops of water. Each subpopulation of the marine microbe Prochlorococcus is characterized by a shared genomic "backbone." The figurative backbones are depicted in this artist's rendering.

Ocean microbes display remarkable genetic diversity

Diversity and Biogeography,

The smallest, most abundant marine microbe, Prochlorococcus, is a photosynthetic bacteria species essential to the marine ecosystem. An estimated billion billion billion of the single-cell creatures live in the oceans, forming the base of the marine food chain and occupying a range of ecological niches based on temperature, light and chemical preferences, and interactions with other species. But the full extent and characteristics of diversity within this single species remains a puzzle. Continue reading Ocean microbes display remarkable genetic diversity →

Publication

Kashtan, N., S.E Roggensack, S. Rodrigue, J.W. Thompson, S.J. Biller, A. Coe, H. Ding, P. Marttinen, R. Stocker, M.J. Follows, R. Stepanauskas and S.W. Chisholm (2014) Single cell genomics reveals hundreds of coexisting subpopulations in wild Prochlorococcus, Science, 344(6182), 416-420, doi: 10.1126/science.1248575

Publication

Death, R., J.L. Wadham, F. Monteiro, A.M. Le Brocq, M. Tranter, A. Ridgwell, A., S. Dutkiewicz, and R. Raiswell, (2014) Antarctic Ice Sheet fertilises the Southern Ocean, Biogeosciences, 11, 2635-2643, doi: 10.5194/bg-11-2635-2014

Publication:

Clayton, S., T. Nagai and M.J. Follows (2014), Fine scale phytoplankton community structure across the Kuroshio Front. J. Plankton Res., 1-14, doi: 10.1093/plankt/fbu020

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Darwin goes to Ocean Sciences 2014

Climate Change, Diversity and Biogeography, Macromolecular Modeling, Mixotrophy, Nitrogen Fixation, Top-Down Control, Trait Based Approaches, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leaving the cold of a New England February behind, the Darwin team will be in full attendance at this year’s Ocean Sciences conference taking place February 23-28 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Continue reading Darwin goes to Ocean Sciences 2014 →

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Size Structure: exploring nutrient versus grazing control

Top-Down Control, Trait Based Approaches, ,

Idealized equilibrium models have attributed the observed size structure of marine communities to the interactions between nutrient and grazing control. In a new paper in the Journal of Plankton Research Ben Ward and co-authors Stephanie Dutkiewicz and Mick Follows examine this theory in a more realistic context using a size-structured global ocean food-web model, together with a much simplified version of the same model for which equilibrium solutions are readily obtained.

Continue reading Size Structure: exploring nutrient versus grazing control →