Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores
Ocean acidification is potentially one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems and global carbon cycling. Amongst calcifying organisms, coccolithophores have received special attention because their calcite precipitation plays a significant role in alkalinity flux to the deep ocean (i.e., inorg...
Published in: | PLoS ONE |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Public Library of Science
2010
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955539 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976167 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013436 |
id |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:2955539 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:2955539 2023-05-15T17:50:03+02:00 Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores Irie, Takahiro Bessho, Kazuhiro Findlay, Helen S. Calosi, Piero 2010-10-15 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955539 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976167 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013436 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955539 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976167 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013436 Irie et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2010 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013436 2013-09-03T05:52:13Z Ocean acidification is potentially one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems and global carbon cycling. Amongst calcifying organisms, coccolithophores have received special attention because their calcite precipitation plays a significant role in alkalinity flux to the deep ocean (i.e., inorganic carbon pump). Currently, empirical effort is devoted to evaluating the plastic responses to acidification, but evolutionary considerations are missing from this approach. We thus constructed an optimality model to evaluate the evolutionary response of coccolithophorid life history, assuming that their exoskeleton (coccolith) serves to reduce the instantaneous mortality rates. Our model predicted that natural selection favors constructing more heavily calcified exoskeleton in response to increased acidification-driven costs. This counter-intuitive response occurs because the fitness benefit of choosing a better-defended, slower growth strategy in more acidic conditions, outweighs that of accelerating the cell cycle, as this occurs by producing less calcified exoskeleton. Contrary to the widely held belief, the evolutionarily optimized population can precipitate larger amounts of CaCO3 during the bloom in more acidified seawater, depending on parameter values. These findings suggest that ocean acidification may enhance the calcification rates of marine organisms as an adaptive response, possibly accompanied by higher carbon fixation ability. Our theory also provides a compelling explanation for the multispecific fossil time-series record from ∼200 years ago to present, in which mean coccolith size has increased along with rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. Text Ocean acidification PubMed Central (PMC) PLoS ONE 5 10 e13436 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
PubMed Central (PMC) |
op_collection_id |
ftpubmed |
language |
English |
topic |
Research Article |
spellingShingle |
Research Article Irie, Takahiro Bessho, Kazuhiro Findlay, Helen S. Calosi, Piero Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
Ocean acidification is potentially one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems and global carbon cycling. Amongst calcifying organisms, coccolithophores have received special attention because their calcite precipitation plays a significant role in alkalinity flux to the deep ocean (i.e., inorganic carbon pump). Currently, empirical effort is devoted to evaluating the plastic responses to acidification, but evolutionary considerations are missing from this approach. We thus constructed an optimality model to evaluate the evolutionary response of coccolithophorid life history, assuming that their exoskeleton (coccolith) serves to reduce the instantaneous mortality rates. Our model predicted that natural selection favors constructing more heavily calcified exoskeleton in response to increased acidification-driven costs. This counter-intuitive response occurs because the fitness benefit of choosing a better-defended, slower growth strategy in more acidic conditions, outweighs that of accelerating the cell cycle, as this occurs by producing less calcified exoskeleton. Contrary to the widely held belief, the evolutionarily optimized population can precipitate larger amounts of CaCO3 during the bloom in more acidified seawater, depending on parameter values. These findings suggest that ocean acidification may enhance the calcification rates of marine organisms as an adaptive response, possibly accompanied by higher carbon fixation ability. Our theory also provides a compelling explanation for the multispecific fossil time-series record from ∼200 years ago to present, in which mean coccolith size has increased along with rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. |
format |
Text |
author |
Irie, Takahiro Bessho, Kazuhiro Findlay, Helen S. Calosi, Piero |
author_facet |
Irie, Takahiro Bessho, Kazuhiro Findlay, Helen S. Calosi, Piero |
author_sort |
Irie, Takahiro |
title |
Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores |
title_short |
Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores |
title_full |
Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores |
title_fullStr |
Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores |
title_full_unstemmed |
Increasing Costs Due to Ocean Acidification Drives Phytoplankton to Be More Heavily Calcified: Optimal Growth Strategy of Coccolithophores |
title_sort |
increasing costs due to ocean acidification drives phytoplankton to be more heavily calcified: optimal growth strategy of coccolithophores |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2010 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955539 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976167 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013436 |
genre |
Ocean acidification |
genre_facet |
Ocean acidification |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955539 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976167 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013436 |
op_rights |
Irie et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013436 |
container_title |
PLoS ONE |
container_volume |
5 |
container_issue |
10 |
container_start_page |
e13436 |
_version_ |
1766156642621063168 |