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Marine phytoplankton temperature versus growth responses from polar to tropical waters – outcome of a scientific community-wide study
Citation
Boyd, PW and Rynearson, TA and Armstrong, EA and Fu, F and Hayashi, K and Hu, Z and Hutchins, DA and Kudela, RM and Litchman, E and Mulholland, MR and Passow, U and Strzepek, RF and Whittaker, KA and Yu, E and Thomas, MK, Marine phytoplankton temperature versus growth responses from polar to tropical waters - outcome of a scientific community-wide study, PLoS One, 8, (5) Article e63091. ISSN 1932-6203 (2013) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
DOI: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063091
Abstract
‘‘It takes a village to finish (marine) science these days’’ Paraphrased from Curtis Huttenhower (the Human Microbiome
project) The rapidity and complexity of climate change and its potential effects on ocean biota are challenging how ocean
scientists conduct research. One way in which we can begin to better tackle these challenges is to conduct community-wide
scientific studies. This study provides physiological datasets fundamental to understanding functional responses of
phytoplankton growth rates to temperature. While physiological experiments are not new, our experiments were
conducted in many laboratories using agreed upon protocols and 25 strains of eukaryotic and prokaryotic phytoplankton
isolated across a wide range of marine environments from polar to tropical, and from nearshore waters to the open ocean.
This community-wide approach provides both comprehensive and internally consistent datasets produced over
considerably shorter time scales than conventional individual and often uncoordinated lab efforts. Such datasets can be
used to parameterise global ocean model projections of environmental change and to provide initial insights into the
magnitude of regional biogeographic change in ocean biota in the coming decades. Here, we compare our datasets with a
compilation of literature data on phytoplankton growth responses to temperature. A comparison with prior published data
suggests that the optimal temperatures of individual species and, to a lesser degree, thermal niches were similar across
studies. However, a comparison of the maximum growth rate across studies revealed significant departures between this
and previously collected datasets, which may be due to differences in the cultured isolates, temporal changes in the clonal
isolates in cultures, and/or differences in culture conditions. Such methodological differences mean that using particular
trait measurements from the prior literature might introduce unknown errors and bias into modelling projections. Using our
community-wide approach we can reduce such protocol-driven variability in culture studies, and can begin to address more
complex issues such as the effect of multiple environmental drivers on ocean biota.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Research Division: | Biological Sciences |
Research Group: | Ecology |
Research Field: | Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) |
Objective Division: | Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards |
Objective Group: | Adaptation to climate change |
Objective Field: | Climate change adaptation measures (excl. ecosystem) |
UTAS Author: | Boyd, PW (Professor Philip Boyd) |
ID Code: | 95527 |
Year Published: | 2013 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 165 |
Deposited By: | IMAS Research and Education Centre |
Deposited On: | 2014-10-03 |
Last Modified: | 2014-11-06 |
Downloads: | 496 View Download Statistics |
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