Study provides new insights into the base of the marine ecosystem
All life starts at a small scale, including life in the ocean. Microscopic plants called phytoplankton form an important base for the marine ecosystem, and ultimately determine how fish stocks develop and how much atmospheric carbon dioxide is taken up by the ocean. Understanding the base of the marine ecosystem is important for two essential questions for the future of the human population: nutrition and climate.
Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, the University of Liverpool and GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have developed a new model for studying phytoplankton growth in the ocean. The research was funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and was published in Science Advances.
“As new methods and tools enable detailed analyses of metabolic pathways in phytoplankton cells and micronutrients in the ocean, new models like this will help us generalize to larger scales, and even global cycles, in a changing ocean,” said Mike Sieracki, a program director in NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.
The model was coupled to metaproteomics — the study of microbial proteins — and environmental data to allow accurate predictions of phytoplankton growth rates in the Southern Ocean.
“You can think of phytoplankton growth like industrial manufacturing: materials come into the factory and are processed on assembly lines, creating the final product,” said...
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