Supplementary material from "Inter- and intraspecific phenotypic plasticity of three phytoplankton species in response to ocean acidification"

• Main Authors: Hattich, Giannina S. I., Listmann, Luisa, Raab, Julia, Ozod-Seradj, Dorthe, Reusch, Thorsten B. H., Matthiessen, Birte
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Figshare 2017
• Subjects: Evolutionary Biology; FOS Biological sciences; Ecology; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3667954; https://figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Inter-_and_intraspecific_phenotypic_plasticity_of_three_phytoplankton_species_in_response_to_ocean_acidification_/3667954

Phenotypic plasticity describes the phenotypic adjustment of the same genotype to different environmental conditions and is best described by a reaction norm. We focus on the effect of ocean acidification on inter- and intraspecific reaction norms of three globally important phytoplankton species ( Emiliania huxleyi, Gephyrocapsa oceanica and Chaetoceros affinis ). Despite significant differences in growth rates between the species, they all showed a high potential for phenotypic buffering (similar growth rates between ambient and high CO 2 condition). Only three coccolithophore genotypes showed a reduced growth in high CO 2 . Diverging responses to high CO 2 of single coccolithophore genotypes compared with the respective mean species responses, however, raise the question if an extrapolation to the population level is possible from single-genotype experiments. We therefore compared the mean response of all tested genotypes to a total species response comprising the same genotypes, which was not significantly different in the coccolithophores. Assessing species reaction norm to different environmental conditions on short time scale in a genotype-mix could thus reduce sampling effort while increasing predictive power.