For some microbes, the motto for growth is not so much “every cell for itself,” but rather, “all for one and one for all.”
MIT researchers have found that cells in a bacterial colony grow in a way that benefits the community as a whole. That is, while an individual cell may divide in the presence of plentiful resources to benefit itself, when a cell is a member of a larger colony, it may choose instead to grow in a more cooperative fashion, increasing an entire colony’s chance of survival.
Kempes, CP et al. (2013) Morphological optimization for access to dual oxidants in biofilms PNAS, 111, 1, 208-213, doi:10.1073/pnas.1315521110)
Winners and Losers: Phytoplankton in a Changing Climate
Stephanie Dutkiewicz at MIT Future Ocean Symposium, September 9, 2013.
Jonathan Lauderdale is a physical oceanographer and ocean biogeochemical modeller “intrigued” by the mechanisms through which the ocean can alter Earth’s climate and atmospheric CO2 concentration both in the past and under future anthropogenic changes. So far his focus has been on high latitude regions, particularly the Southern Ocean. He mostly uses global coarse resolution numerical models of ocean circulation coupled to simplified biogeochemistry routines, but also exploits composite tracers to reveal how different components of carbon and nutrient cycles operate.
Clayton, S., S. Dutkiewicz , O. Jahn, and M.J. Follows (2013), Ocean eddies and dispersal maintain phytoplankton diversity, Limnology and Oceanography, Fluids and Environments, Volume 3: 182–197, doi: 10.1215/21573689-2373515
Ward, B.A., S. Dutkiewicz, and M.J. Follows (2013), Top-down and bottom-up controls in a global size-structured plankton food-web model, Journal of Plankton Research , 0, 1-17, doi: 10.1093/plankt/fbt097
Lauderdale, J.M., A.C.N. Garabato, K.I.C. Oliver, M.J. Follows and R.G. Williams(2013), Wind-driven changes in Southern Ocean residual circulation, ocean carbon reservoirs and atmospheric CO2, Climate Dynamics, vol. 41, pp. 2145, doi: 10.1007%2Fs00382-012-1650-3
Predators’ switching towards the most abundant prey is a mechanism that stabilizes population dynamics and helps overcome competitive exclusion of species in food webs. However, current formulations of active prey-switching in marine ecosystem models display non-maximal feeding; the total ingestion of prey by predators decays exponentially with the number of prey species even though the total prey biomass stays constant.
Continue reading The dynamics of dining in an all-you-can-eat-phytoplankton buffet
Vallina, S. M. , B. A. Ward, S. Dutkiewicz, and M. J. Follows (2013), Maximal feeding with active prey-switching: a kill-the-winner functional response and its effect on global diversity and biogeography, Progress in Oceanography, 120, 93–109, doi: 10.1016/j.pocean.2013.08.001
Goebel, N.L., C.A. Edwards, J.P. Zehr, M.J. Follows and S.G. Morgan (2013), Modeled phytoplankton diversity and productivity in the California Current System, Ecological Modelling, vol. 264, pp. 37, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.11.008