Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean
The Subantarctic Zone of the Southern Ocean plays a disproportionally large role on the Earth system. Model projections predict rapid environmental change in the coming decades, including ocean acidification, warming, and changes in nutrient supply which pose a serious risk for marine ecosystems. Ye...
Published in: | Frontiers in Marine Science |
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Frontiers Media SA
2023
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884/full |
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crfrontiers:10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884 2024-02-11T10:07:30+01:00 Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean Rigual-Hernández, Andrés S. Langer, Gerald Sierro, Francisco Javier Bostock, Helen Sánchez-Santos, José Manuel Nodder, Scott Davidson Trull, Tom W. Ballegeer, Anne Marie Moy, Andrew D. Eriksen, Ruth Makowka, Laura Béjard, Thibauld M. Rigal-Muñoz, Francisco Henri Hernández-Martín, Alberto Zorita-Viota, María Flores, José Abel HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884/full unknown Frontiers Media SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Frontiers in Marine Science volume 10 ISSN 2296-7745 Ocean Engineering Water Science and Technology Aquatic Science Global and Planetary Change Oceanography journal-article 2023 crfrontiers https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884 2024-01-26T09:58:38Z The Subantarctic Zone of the Southern Ocean plays a disproportionally large role on the Earth system. Model projections predict rapid environmental change in the coming decades, including ocean acidification, warming, and changes in nutrient supply which pose a serious risk for marine ecosystems. Yet despite the importance of the Subantarctic Zone, annual and inter-annual time series are extremely rare, leading to important uncertainties about the current state of its ecosystems and hindering predictions of future response to climate change. Moreover, as the longest observational time series available are only a few decades long, it remains unknown whether marine pelagic ecosystems have already responded to ongoing environmental change during the industrial era. Here, we take advantage of multiple sampling efforts – monitoring of surface layer water properties together with sediment trap, seafloor sediment and sediment core sampling – to reconstruct the modern and pre-industrial state of the keystone calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus , central to the global marine carbonate cycle. Morphometric measurements reveal that modern C. leptoporus coccoliths are 15% lighter and 25% smaller than those preserved in the underlying Holocene-aged sediments. The cumulative effect of multiple environmental factors appears responsible for the coccolith size variations since the Last Deglaciation, with warming and ocean acidification most likely playing a predominant role during the industrial era. Notably, extrapolation of our results suggests a future reduction in cell and coccolith size which will have a negative impact on the efficiency of the biological pump in the Southern Ocean through a reduction of carbonate ballasting. Lastly, our results tentatively suggest that C. leptoporus coccolith size could be used as a palaeo-proxy for growth rate. Future culture experiments will be needed to test this hypothesis. Article in Journal/Newspaper Ocean acidification Southern Ocean Frontiers (Publisher) Southern Ocean Frontiers in Marine Science 10 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Frontiers (Publisher) |
op_collection_id |
crfrontiers |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Ocean Engineering Water Science and Technology Aquatic Science Global and Planetary Change Oceanography |
spellingShingle |
Ocean Engineering Water Science and Technology Aquatic Science Global and Planetary Change Oceanography Rigual-Hernández, Andrés S. Langer, Gerald Sierro, Francisco Javier Bostock, Helen Sánchez-Santos, José Manuel Nodder, Scott Davidson Trull, Tom W. Ballegeer, Anne Marie Moy, Andrew D. Eriksen, Ruth Makowka, Laura Béjard, Thibauld M. Rigal-Muñoz, Francisco Henri Hernández-Martín, Alberto Zorita-Viota, María Flores, José Abel Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean |
topic_facet |
Ocean Engineering Water Science and Technology Aquatic Science Global and Planetary Change Oceanography |
description |
The Subantarctic Zone of the Southern Ocean plays a disproportionally large role on the Earth system. Model projections predict rapid environmental change in the coming decades, including ocean acidification, warming, and changes in nutrient supply which pose a serious risk for marine ecosystems. Yet despite the importance of the Subantarctic Zone, annual and inter-annual time series are extremely rare, leading to important uncertainties about the current state of its ecosystems and hindering predictions of future response to climate change. Moreover, as the longest observational time series available are only a few decades long, it remains unknown whether marine pelagic ecosystems have already responded to ongoing environmental change during the industrial era. Here, we take advantage of multiple sampling efforts – monitoring of surface layer water properties together with sediment trap, seafloor sediment and sediment core sampling – to reconstruct the modern and pre-industrial state of the keystone calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus , central to the global marine carbonate cycle. Morphometric measurements reveal that modern C. leptoporus coccoliths are 15% lighter and 25% smaller than those preserved in the underlying Holocene-aged sediments. The cumulative effect of multiple environmental factors appears responsible for the coccolith size variations since the Last Deglaciation, with warming and ocean acidification most likely playing a predominant role during the industrial era. Notably, extrapolation of our results suggests a future reduction in cell and coccolith size which will have a negative impact on the efficiency of the biological pump in the Southern Ocean through a reduction of carbonate ballasting. Lastly, our results tentatively suggest that C. leptoporus coccolith size could be used as a palaeo-proxy for growth rate. Future culture experiments will be needed to test this hypothesis. |
author2 |
HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Rigual-Hernández, Andrés S. Langer, Gerald Sierro, Francisco Javier Bostock, Helen Sánchez-Santos, José Manuel Nodder, Scott Davidson Trull, Tom W. Ballegeer, Anne Marie Moy, Andrew D. Eriksen, Ruth Makowka, Laura Béjard, Thibauld M. Rigal-Muñoz, Francisco Henri Hernández-Martín, Alberto Zorita-Viota, María Flores, José Abel |
author_facet |
Rigual-Hernández, Andrés S. Langer, Gerald Sierro, Francisco Javier Bostock, Helen Sánchez-Santos, José Manuel Nodder, Scott Davidson Trull, Tom W. Ballegeer, Anne Marie Moy, Andrew D. Eriksen, Ruth Makowka, Laura Béjard, Thibauld M. Rigal-Muñoz, Francisco Henri Hernández-Martín, Alberto Zorita-Viota, María Flores, José Abel |
author_sort |
Rigual-Hernández, Andrés S. |
title |
Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean |
title_short |
Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean |
title_full |
Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean |
title_fullStr |
Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean |
title_full_unstemmed |
Reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton Calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the Holocene and modern Subantarctic Southern Ocean |
title_sort |
reduction in size of the calcifying phytoplankton calcidiscus leptoporus to environmental changes between the holocene and modern subantarctic southern ocean |
publisher |
Frontiers Media SA |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884/full |
geographic |
Southern Ocean |
geographic_facet |
Southern Ocean |
genre |
Ocean acidification Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Ocean acidification Southern Ocean |
op_source |
Frontiers in Marine Science volume 10 ISSN 2296-7745 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1159884 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Marine Science |
container_volume |
10 |
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1790606089186705408 |