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ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCY

Fall and rise of the phytoplankton

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 708–709 (2022)Cite this article

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Tiny phytoplankton are the base of ocean production and thus critical to carbon storage, carbon fluxes and living marine resources. Now, research suggests that the vertical migration of these organisms provides a previously under-recognized resiliency to climate warming.

Movement is a fundamental behaviour of animals both on land and in oceans. Less obvious but similarly critical is the movement of land plants in their growth towards light, water and nutrients. Even more difficult to grasp is the idea that the movement of tiny ocean phytoplankton exerts a fundamental control on global ocean ecology. From the Greek ‘phyton’ for plant and ‘plankton’ for drifter, the dominant characteristic of phytoplankton is their diminutive size relative to the vastness of ocean currents and biogeography. Scientists have generally assumed — both in the interpretation of ocean observations and construction of ecological and biogeochemical models — that phytoplankton are primarily passive drifters. Now, writing in Nature Climate Change, Kai Wirtz and colleagues1 argue for the incorporation of phytoplankton active vertical migration as a key process that is ignored in most ocean ecological and biogeochemical models. Active vertical migration provides a physiologically justifiable mechanism of present-day phytoplankton vertical migration, as well as a potentially powerful means of ecological resiliency under future warming.

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Fig. 1: Cartoon depiction of various modes of phytoplankton motility.

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  1. NOAA/OAR Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, USA

    John P. Dunne

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  1. John P. Dunne
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Correspondence to John P. Dunne.

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Dunne, J.P. Fall and rise of the phytoplankton. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 708–709 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01439-w

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