EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

A dynamic energy budget (DEB) model to describe population dynamics of the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus marinus

Michal Grossowicz, Gonçalo M. Marques and George A.K. van Voorn

Ecological Modelling, 2017, vol. 359, issue C, 320-332

Abstract: Small but numerically dominant species such as the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus play a pivotal role in major nutrient cycles. To understand how Prochlorococcus populations affect nutrient flows, we present and analyze two alternative population models. These models − one including over-shading effects and one not − are based on Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) theory to describe how growth may be affected by the availability of CO2 and/or inorganic nutrients and by changes in light conditions. In these models individuals have reserves for C, N, and P from which fluxes for maintenance and growth are mobilized. Time series data from laboratory studies of growth under three different nutrient concentrations are used to calibrate the models. The model with carbon, nitrogen and phosphate as limiting factors can reasonably describe the growth in the low N and low P media experiments, while the model with over-shading gives a proper description of the growth under all tested experimental conditions. Modeled C:N:P ratios are within range of reported in scientific literature ones and similar to measured ratios. The results suggest that (1) reserves play a critical role for cyanobacteria to thrive under the often oligotrophic conditions in which they live, and (2) over-shading has a considerable effect as co-limiting factor on the growth of cyanobacteria. We argue that an individual DEB-based model in which multiple nutrient limitations are presented can be used to successfully describe cyanobacterium growth patterns in batch cultures.

Keywords: Dynamic energy budget; Prochlorococcus; Nutrient assimilation; Over-shading; Multiple growth limitations; Stoichiometry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380017301473
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:359:y:2017:i:c:p:320-332

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2017.06.011

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:359:y:2017:i:c:p:320-332