Abstract
Climate strongly influences the distribution and diversity of animals and plants, but its affect on microbial communities is poorly understood. By using resource competition theory, fundamental physical principles and the fossil record we review how climate selects marine eukaryotic phytoplankton taxa. We suggest that climate determines the equator-to-pole and continent-to-land thermal gradients that provide energy for the wind-driven turbulent mixing in the upper ocean. This mixing, in turn, controls the nutrient fluxes that determine cell size and taxa-level distributions. Understanding this chain of linked processes will allow informed predictions to be made about how phytoplankton communities will change in the future.
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Acknowledgements
The authors' work on this topic was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant number OCE 0241023 PGF) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (grant number 05-TEB/05-33 MJO and PGF).
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Glossary
- Aeolian
-
The continentally derived nutrient input that is transported by the wind.
- Ma
-
(Mega-annum). A unit of time that is equal to 1 million (106) years.
- Oligotrophic
-
An aquatic environment that has low levels of nutrient and algal photosynthetic production (for example, high mountain lakes or the open ocean).
- Primary producer
-
An organism that is the original source of organic material in an ecosystem — plants, algae or chemosynthetic microorganisms.
- Riverine
-
The continentally derived nutrient input that is transported by rivers and streams.
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Falkowski, P., Oliver, M. Mix and match: how climate selects phytoplankton. Nat Rev Microbiol 5, 813–819 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1751
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1751
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