Phytoplankton adaptive resilience to climate change collapses in case of extreme events-A modeling study

As climate change unravels, ecosystems are facing a warming of the climate and an increase in extreme heat events that are unprecedented in recent geological history. We know very little of the ability of oceanic phytoplankton communities, key players in the regulation of Earth's climate by the oceans, to adapt to these changes. Quantifying the resilience of phytoplankton communities to environmental stressors by means of adaptive evolution is however crucial to accurately predict the response of marine ecosystems to climate change. In this work, we use an eco-evolutionary model to simulate the adaptive response of marine phytoplankton to temperature changes in an initially temperate oligotrophic water-column. By exploring a wide range of scenarios of phytoplankton adaptive capacity, we find that phytoplankton can adapt to temperature increases -even very large ones- as long as they occur over the time scale of a century. However, when rapid and extreme events of temperature change are considered, the phytoplankton adaptive capacity breaks down in a number of our scenarios in which primary productivity plummets as a result. This suggests that current Earth System Models assuming perfect phytoplankton adaptatedness to temperature might be overestimating the phytoplankton's resilience to climate change.

Automated summary

As climate change progresses, ecosystems are experiencing unprecedented warming and extreme heat events. However, little is known about the ability of oceanic phytoplankton communities to adapt to these changes, which play a crucial role in regulating Earth's climate. This study uses an eco-evolutionary model to simulate the adaptive response of marine phytoplankton to temperature changes. The results suggest that while phytoplankton can adapt to gradual temperature increases over a century, rapid and extreme temperature changes can lead to reduced primary productivity and potentially overestimated resilience to climate change in current models.