Future phytoplankton diversity in a changing climate

Stephanie A. Henson (), B. B. Cael, Stephanie R. Allen and Stephanie Dutkiewicz
Additional contact information
Stephanie A. Henson: National Oceanography Centre, European Way
B. B. Cael: National Oceanography Centre, European Way
Stephanie R. Allen: National Oceanography Centre, European Way
Stephanie Dutkiewicz: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The future response of marine ecosystem diversity to continued anthropogenic forcing is poorly constrained. Phytoplankton are a diverse set of organisms that form the base of the marine ecosystem. Currently, ocean biogeochemistry and ecosystem models used for climate change projections typically include only 2−3 phytoplankton types and are, therefore, too simple to adequately assess the potential for changes in plankton community structure. Here, we analyse a complex ecosystem model with 35 phytoplankton types to evaluate the changes in phytoplankton community composition, turnover and size structure over the 21st century. We find that the rate of turnover in the phytoplankton community becomes faster during this century, that is, the community structure becomes increasingly unstable in response to climate change. Combined with alterations to phytoplankton diversity, our results imply a loss of ecological resilience with likely knock-on effects on the productivity and functioning of the marine environment.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25699-w Abstract (text/html)

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:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-25699-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25699-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().