Dataset Information

Decoding size distribution patterns in marine and transitional water phytoplankton: from community to species level.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the mechanisms of phytoplankton community assembly is a fundamental issue of aquatic ecology. Here, we use field data from transitional (e.g. coastal lagoons) and coastal water environments to decode patterns of phytoplankton size distribution into organization and adaptive mechanisms. Transitional waters are characterized by higher resource availability and shallower well-mixed water column than coastal marine environments. Differences in physico-chemical regime between the two environments have been hypothesized to exert contrasting selective pressures on phytoplankton cell morphology (size and shape). We tested the hypothesis focusing on resource availability (nutrients and light) and mixed layer depth as ecological axes that define ecological niches of phytoplankton. We report fundamental differences in size distributions of marine and freshwater diatoms, with transitional water phytoplankton significantly smaller and with higher surface to volume ratio than marine species. Here, we hypothesize that mixing condition affecting size-dependent sinking may drive phytoplankton size and shape distributions. The interplay between shallow mixed layer depth and frequent and complete mixing of transitional waters may likely increase the competitive advantage of small phytoplankton limiting large cell fitness. The nutrient regime appears to explain the size distribution within both marine and transitional water environments, while it seem does not explain the pattern observed across the two environments. In addition, difference in light availability across the two environments appear do not explain the occurrence of asymmetric size distribution at each hierarchical level. We hypothesize that such competitive equilibria and adaptive strategies in resource exploitation may drive by organism's behavior which exploring patch resources in transitional and marine phytoplankton communities.

SUBMITTER: Roselli L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4431714 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Decoding size distribution patterns in marine and transitional water phytoplankton: from community to species level.

Roselli Leonilde L Basset Alberto A

PloS one 20150514 5

Understanding the mechanisms of phytoplankton community assembly is a fundamental issue of aquatic ecology. Here, we use field data from transitional (e.g. coastal lagoons) and coastal water environments to decode patterns of phytoplankton size distribution into organization and adaptive mechanisms. Transitional waters are characterized by higher resource availability and shallower well-mixed water column than coastal marine environments. Differences in physico-chemical regime between the two en ...[more]

PMID: 25974052

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Project description:Phytoplankton transform inorganic carbon into thousands of biomolecules that represent an important pool of fixed carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in the surface ocean. Metabolite production differs between phytoplankton, and the flux of these molecules through the microbial food web depends on compound-specific bioavailability to members of a wider microbial community. Yet relatively little is known about the diversity or concentration of metabolites within marine plankton. Here, we compare 313 polar metabolites in 21 cultured phytoplankton species and in natural planktonic communities across environmental gradients to show that bulk community metabolomes reflect the chemical composition of the phytoplankton community. We also show that groups of compounds have similar patterns across space and taxonomy, suggesting that the concentrations of these compounds in the environment are controlled by similar sources and sinks. We quantify several compounds in the surface ocean that represent substantial understudied pools of labile carbon. For example, the N-containing metabolite homarine was up to 3% of particulate carbon and is produced in high concentrations by cultured Synechococcus, and S-containing gonyol accumulated up to 2.5 nM in surface particles and likely originates from dinoflagellates or haptophytes. Our results show that phytoplankton composition directly shapes the carbon composition of the surface ocean. Our findings suggest that in order to access these pools of bioavailable carbon, the wider microbial community must be adapted to phytoplankton community composition.IMPORTANCE Microscopic phytoplankton transform 100 million tons of inorganic carbon into thousands of different organic compounds each day. The structure of each chemical is critical to its biological and ecosystem function, yet the diversity of biomolecules produced by marine microbial communities remained mainly unexplored, especially small polar molecules which are often considered the currency of the microbial loop. Here, we explore the abundance and diversity of small biomolecules in planktonic communities across ecological gradients in the North Pacific and within 21 cultured phytoplankton species. Our work demonstrates that phytoplankton diversity is an important determinant of the chemical composition of the highly bioavailable pool of organic carbon in the ocean, and we highlight understudied yet abundant compounds in both the environment and cultured organisms. These findings add to understanding of how the chemical makeup of phytoplankton shapes marine microbial communities where the ability to sense and use biomolecules depends on the chemical structure.

Project description:A cruise was conducted in the summer of 2023 from the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) to the adjacent waters of the Xisha Islands in the northern South China Sea (NSCS) to investigate the distribution, community structure, and assembly patterns of eukaryotic and prokaryotic phytoplankton using high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and microscopic observation. Dinophyta were the most abundant phylum in the eukaryotic phytoplankton community based on HTS, accounting for 92.17% of the total amplicon sequence variants (ASVs). Syndiniales was the most abundant order among eukaryotic phytoplankton, whereas Prochlorococcus was the most abundant genus within cyanobacteria. The alpha diversity showed the lowest values in the PRE area and decreased gradually with depth, while cyanobacteria exhibited higher alpha diversity indices in the PRE and at depths ranging from 75 m to 750 m. The morphological results were different from the data based on HTS. Diatoms (37 species) dominated the phytoplankton community, with an average abundance of 3.01 × 104 cells L-1, but only six species of dinoflagellate were observed. Spearman correlation analysis and redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that the distribution and community structure of phytoplankton were largely influenced by geographical location and environmental parameters in the NSCS. The neutral community model (NCM) and null model indicated that deterministic processes played a significant role in the assembly of eukaryotic phytoplankton, with heterogeneous selection and homogeneous selection accounting for 47.27 and 29.95%, respectively. However, stochastic processes (over 60%) dominated the assembly of cyanobacteria and undominated processes accounted for 63.44%. In summary, the formation of eukaryotic phytoplankton was mainly influenced by environmental factors and geographic location, but the assembly of cyanobacteria was shaped by both stochastic processes, which accounted for over 60%, and environmental selection in the NSCS.

Dataset Information

Decoding size distribution patterns in marine and transitional water phytoplankton: from community to species level.

Publications

Decoding size distribution patterns in marine and transitional water phytoplankton: from community to species level.

Similar Datasets

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