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Winners and losers in a warming ocean

Climate Change, Diversity and Biogeography,

by Alli Gold Roberts (MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change)
Read this story at MIT News

Phytoplankton — small plant-like organisms that serve as the base of the marine ecosystem — play a crucial role in maintaining the health of our oceans by consuming carbon dioxide and fueling the food web. But with a changing climate, which of these vital organisms will survive, and what impact will their demise have on fish higher up the chain?
Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a researcher with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, and her colleagues developed a model that investigates the potential effects of climate change on phytoplankton.

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On the potential role of marine calcifiers in glacial-interglacial dynamics

Climate Change,

Ice-core measurements reveal a highly asymmetric cycle in Antarctic temperature and atmospheric CO2 over the last 800,000 years. Both CO2 and temperature decrease over 100,000 years going into a glacial period, then rise steeply over less than 10,000 years at the end of a glacial. There does not yet exist wide agreement about the causes of this cycle or about the origin of its shape. In this article, recently accepted in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Darwin researchers Anne Willem Omta, Mick Follows and co-authors, explore the possibility that an ecologically driven oscillator may play a role in the dynamics.

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Publication

Ward, B.A., M. Schartau, A. Oschlies, A.P. Martin, M.J. Follows and T.R. Anderson, TR (2013), When is a biogeochemical model too complex? Objective model reduction and selection for North Atlantic time-series sites Progress in Oceanography, vol. 116, pp. 49, doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2013.06.002

Publication

Ward, B.A., S. Dutkiewicz, C.M. Moore and M.J. Follows (2013), Iron, phosphorus, and nitrogen supply ratios define the biogeography of nitrogen fixation Limnology and Oceanography, vol. 58, pp. 2059, doi: 10.4319/lo.2013.58.6.2059

 

Publication

Dutkiewicz, S., J.R. Scott and M.J. Follows (2013), Winners and losers: Ecological and biogeochemical changes in a warming ocean, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, vol. 27, pp. 463, doi: 10.1002/gbc.20042

Publication

Fiksen, O., M.J. Follows and D.L. Aksnes (2013), Trait-based models of nutrient uptake in microbes extend the Michaelis-Menten framework, Limnology and Oceanography, vol. 58, pp. 193, doi: 10.4319/lo.2013.58.1.0193

Publication

Barton, A.D., Z.V. Finkel, B.A. Ward, D.G. Johns and M.J. Follows (2013), The roles of cell size and trophic strategy in North Atlantic diatom and dinoflagellate communities. Limnology and Oceanography, 58(1), 2013, 254-266, doi: 10.4319/lo.2013.58.1.0254

Publication

Kempes, C.P., S. Dutkiewicz, and M.J. Follows (2012), Growth, metabolic partitioning, and the size of microorganisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 109, 495-500, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1115585109