E 2009, by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, Inc. Thresholds of gross primary production for the metabolic balance of marine planktonic communities

• Main Authors: Carlos M. Duarte, Aurore Regaudie-de-gioux
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Indian; Pacific; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.298.1081; http://www.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_54/issue_3/1015.pdf

The notion that less productive marine planktonic communities tend to be heterotrophic was tested by synthesizing reported estimates of the relationships between the net community production or community respiration and gross primary production (GPP), allowing calculation of the threshold GPP separating less productive, heterotrophic communities from more productive, autotrophic ones. A total of 35 estimates of the threshold GPP were assembled, derived from reports of comparative analyses of individual regions (Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Southern Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and Indian Ocean) and global comparative analyses for open-ocean and coastal environments, time-series analyses of changes in planktonic metabolism at individual locations, experimental manipulations in mesocosms, and a semi-empirical modeling exercise. Planktonic communities of the open ocean and continental shelf showed threshold GPP values ranging 30-fold