Community composition has greater impact on the functioning of marine phytoplankton communities than ocean acidification.

Eggers, Sarah Lena, Lewandowska, Aleksandra M., Barcelos e Ramos, Joana, Blanco-Ameijeiras, Sonia, Gallo, Francesca and Matthiessen, Birte (2014) Community composition has greater impact on the functioning of marine phytoplankton communities than ocean acidification. Global Change Biology, 20 (3). pp. 713-723. DOI 10.1111/gcb.12421.

[thumbnail of Eggers.pdf] Text
Eggers.pdf - Reprinted Version
Restricted to Registered users only

Download (286kB) | Contact

Supplementary data:

Abstract

Ecosystem functioning is simultaneously affected by changes in community composition and environmental change such as increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and subsequent ocean acidification. However, it largely remains uncertain how the effects of these factors compare to each other. Addressing this question, we experimentally tested the hypothesis that initial community composition and elevated CO2 are equally important to the regulation of phytoplankton biomass. We full-factorially exposed three compositionally different marine phytoplankton communities to two different CO2 levels and examined the effects and relative importance (ω2) of the two factors and their interaction on phytoplankton biomass at bloom peak. The results showed that initial community composition had a significantly greater impact than elevated CO2 on phytoplankton biomass, which varied largely among communities. We suggest that the different initial ratios between cyanobacteria, diatoms, and dinoflagellates might be the key for the varying competitive and thus functional outcome among communities. Furthermore, the results showed that depending on initial community composition elevated CO2 selected for larger sized diatoms, which led to increased total phytoplankton biomass. Our study highlights the relevance of initial community composition, which strongly drives the functional outcome, when assessing impacts of climate change on ecosystem functioning. In particular, the increase in phytoplankton biomass driven by the gain of larger sized diatoms in response to elevated CO2 potentially has strong implications for nutrient cycling and carbon export in future oceans.

Document Type: Article
Additional Information: WOS:000331203500003
Keywords: Azores; biomass; climate change; community composition; diversity; ecosystem functioning; ocean acidification; phytoplankton
Research affiliation: OceanRep > GEOMAR > FB3 Marine Ecology > FB3-EOE-N Experimental Ecology - Food Webs
Refereed: Yes
Open Access Journal?: No
Publisher: Wiley
Projects: Future Ocean
Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2013 09:24
Last Modified: 17 May 2018 13:29
URI: https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/22621

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item