Environmental stability affects phenotypic evolution in a globally distributed marine picoplankton

• Main Authors: Schaum, Elisa, Rost, Björn, Collins, Sinéad
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2016
• Subjects: Alkalinity; total; standard deviation; Aragonite saturation state; Bicarbonate ion; Biomass/Abundance/Elemental composition; Bottles or small containers/Aquaria (<20 L); Calcite saturation state; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. (2010); Carbon; inorganic; dissolved; Carbon/Nitrogen ratio; Carbonate ion; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Cell size; Chlorophyll a; Chlorophyll a per cell; Chlorophyta; Ecotype; Figure; Fugacity of carbon dioxide (water) at sea surface temperature (wet air); Growth/Morphology; Growth rate; Laboratory experiment; Laboratory strains; Lipids; Lipids per cell; Net photosynthesis rate; oxygen; per cell; Not applicable; OA-ICC; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre; Ostreococcus sp.; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide (water) at sea surface temperature (wet air); Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.863127; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.863127

Marine phytoplankton can evolve rapidly when confronted with aspects of climate change because of their large population sizes and fast generation times. Despite this, the importance of environment fluctuations, a key feature of climate change, has received little attention-selection experiments with marine phytoplankton are usually carried out in stable environments and use single or few representatives of a species, genus or functional group. Here we investigate whether and by how much environmental fluctuations contribute to changes in ecologically important phytoplankton traits such as C:N ratios and cell size, and test the variability of changes in these traits within the globally distributed species Ostreococcus. We have evolved 16 physiologically distinct lineages of Ostreococcus at stable high CO2 (1031±87 µatm CO2, SH) and fluctuating high CO2 (1012±244 µatm CO2, FH) for 400 generations. We find that although both fluctuation and high CO2 drive evolution, FH-evolved lineages are smaller, have reduced C:N ratios and respond more strongly to further increases in CO2 than do SH-evolved lineages. This indicates that environmental fluctuations are an important factor to consider when predicting how the characteristics of future phytoplankton populations will have an impact on biogeochemical cycles and higher trophic levels in marine food webs.