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Light-driven synchrony of Prochlorococcus growth and mortality in the subtropical Pacific gyre
- Source :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 112 (26). pp. 8008-8012.
- Publication Year :
- 2015
- Publisher :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015.
-
Abstract
- Theoretical studies predict that competition for limited resources reduces biodiversity to the point of ecological instability, whereas strong predator/prey interactions enhance the number of coexisting species and limit fluctuations in abundances. In open ocean ecosystems, competition for low availability of essential nutrients results in relatively few abundant microbial species. The remarkable stability in overall cell abundance of the dominant photosynthetic cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus is assumed to reflect a simple food web structure strongly controlled by grazers and/or viruses. This hypothesized link between stability and ecological interactions, however, has been difficult to test with open ocean microbes because sampling methods commonly have poor temporal and spatial resolution. Here we use continuous techniques on two different winter-time cruises to show that Prochlorococcus cell production and mortality rates are tightly synchronized to the day/night cycle across the subtropical Pacific Ocean. In warmer waters, we observed harmonic oscillations in cell production and mortality rates, with a peak in mortality rate consistently occurring ∼6 h after the peak in cell production. Essentially no cell mortality was observed during daylight. Our results are best explained as a synchronized two-component trophic interaction with the per-capita rates of Prochlorococcus consumption driven either directly by the day/night cycle or indirectly by Prochlorococcus cell production. Light-driven synchrony of food web dynamics in which most of the newly produced Prochlorococcus cells are consumed each night likely enforces ecosystem stability across vast expanses of the open ocean. © 2015, National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
- Subjects :
- Food Chain
Light
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
01 natural sciences
03 medical and health sciences
Food chain
Abundance (ecology)
Ocean gyre
Ecosystem
14. Life underwater
Prochlorococcus
030304 developmental biology
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Trophic level
Ecological stability
0303 health sciences
geography
Pacific Ocean
Multidisciplinary
geography.geographical_feature_category
biology
Ecology
Temperature
Biological Sciences
15. Life on land
biology.organism_classification
Food web
13. Climate action
Water Microbiology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 10916490 and 00278424
- Volume :
- 112
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....781c7394eb81c3e78eafa44ee888ed2c