TY - JOUR
T1 - The craving for phosphorus in heterotrophic dinoflagellates and its potential implications for biogeochemical cycles
AU - Meunier, Cédric L.
AU - Alvarez-Fernandez, Santiago
AU - Cunha-Dupont, Alessandra
AU - Geisen, Carla
AU - Malzahn, Arne M.
AU - Boersma, Maarten
AU - Wiltshire, Karen H.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was partly financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG grant MA 14501-1) and by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF grant 01LN1702A). It completely complies with current German legislation on animal studies.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - By altering the nutritional quality of primary producers, nutrient availability indirectly influences herbivores' population dynamics. In turn, the resulting relationship between diet, growth, and wastes has consequences for nutrient cycling at the ecosystem level. We studied the link between dinoflagellates nutritional requirements and feeding behavior, and its influence on nutrient cycling. We show that long-term shifts in dissolved PO4 concentration in the North Sea are closely linked to biomass trends of heterotrophic dinoflagellates and support this observation with experimental data indicating particularly high phosphorus requirements in dinoflagellates. At the seasonal scale, we observe a negative correlation between natural dinoflagellate abundances and the concentration of dissolved P, and we estimate that, in spring, up to 30% of dissolved P can end up in microzooplankton biomass. Our study highlights that accounting for organismal metabolic requirement provides significant insight in interpreting and predicting nutrient cycles at the ecosystem level.
AB - By altering the nutritional quality of primary producers, nutrient availability indirectly influences herbivores' population dynamics. In turn, the resulting relationship between diet, growth, and wastes has consequences for nutrient cycling at the ecosystem level. We studied the link between dinoflagellates nutritional requirements and feeding behavior, and its influence on nutrient cycling. We show that long-term shifts in dissolved PO4 concentration in the North Sea are closely linked to biomass trends of heterotrophic dinoflagellates and support this observation with experimental data indicating particularly high phosphorus requirements in dinoflagellates. At the seasonal scale, we observe a negative correlation between natural dinoflagellate abundances and the concentration of dissolved P, and we estimate that, in spring, up to 30% of dissolved P can end up in microzooplankton biomass. Our study highlights that accounting for organismal metabolic requirement provides significant insight in interpreting and predicting nutrient cycles at the ecosystem level.
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U2 - 10.1002/lno.10807
DO - 10.1002/lno.10807
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051208978
SN - 0024-3590
VL - 63
SP - 1774
EP - 1784
JO - Limnology and Oceanography
JF - Limnology and Oceanography
IS - 4
ER -