Ocean kinetic energy and photosynthetic biomass are important drivers of planktonic foraminifera diversity in the Atlantic Ocean

• Published in: Frontiers in Marine Science
• Main Authors: Rufino, Marta M., Salgueiro, Emilia, Voelker, Antje H.L., Polito, Paulo S., Cermeño, Pedro, Abrantes, Fátima
• Other Authors: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media 2022
• Subjects: Diversity; Planktonic foraminifera; Atlantic Ocean; Chl-a; SST; Kinetic energy; http://metadata.un.org/sdg/14; Conserve and sustainably use the oceans; seas and marine resources for sustainable development
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/286987; https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.887346; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001871; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033

18 pages, 7 figures, supplementary material https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.887346/full#supplementary-material.-- Data availability statement: Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found at the PANGAEA DATA PUBLISHER under https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.873570; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.878069; and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.923299 To assess the anthropogenic effect on biodiversity, it is essential to understand the global diversity distribution of the major groups at the base of the food chain, ideally before global warming initiation (1850 Common Era CE). Since organisms in the plankton are highly interconnected and carbonate synthesizing species have a good preservation state in the Atlantic Ocean, the diversity distribution pattern of planktonic foraminifera from 1741 core-top surface sediment samples (expanded ForCenS database) provides a case study to comprehend centennial to decadal time-averaged diversity patterns at pre-1970 CE times, the tempo of the substantial increase in tropospheric warming. In this work, it is hypothesized and tested for the first time, that the large-scale diversity patterns of foraminifera communities are determined by sea surface temperature (SST, representing energy), Chl-a (a surrogate for photosynthetic biomass), and ocean kinetic energy (as EKE). Alpha diversity was estimated using species richness (S), Shannon Wiener index (H), and Simpson evenness (E), and mapped using geostatistical approaches. The three indices are significantly related to SST, Chl-a, and EKE (71-88% of the deviance in the generalized additive mixed model, including a spatial component). Beta diversity was studied through species turnover using gradient forest analysis (59% of the variation). The primary community thresholds of foraminifera species turnover were associated with 5-10 °C and 22-28 °C SST, 0.05-0.15 mg m-3 Chl-a, and 1.2-2.0 cm2 s-2 log10 EKE energy, respectively. Six of the most important foraminifera species ...