Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 113, Issue 11, Pages 2958-2963Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1517118113
Keywords
mixotrophy; plankton; size; trophic transfer; biological pump
Categories
Funding
- Laboratoire d'Excellence LabexMER Grant [ANR-10-LABX-19]
- French government under the Investissements d'Avenir Program
- Regional Council of Brittany (SAD Programme)
- PALEOGENiE Project Grant [ERC-2013-CoG-617313]
- NASA [NNX13AC34G]
- NSF [OCE-1434007]
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Marine Microbiology Initiative Grant [3778]
- Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology
- NASA [476181, NNX13AC34G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Ocean Sciences [1434007] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Mixotrophic plankton, which combine the uptake of inorganic resources and the ingestion of living prey, are ubiquitous in marine ecosystems, but their integrated biogeochemical impacts remain unclear. We address this issue by removing the strict distinction between phytoplankton and zooplankton from a global model of the marine plankton food web. This simplification allows the emergence of a realistic trophic network with increased fidelity to empirical estimates of plankton community structure and elemental stoichiometry, relative to a system in which autotrophy and heterotrophy are mutually exclusive. Mixotrophy enhances the transfer of bio-mass to larger sizes classes further up the food chain, leading to an approximately threefold increase in global mean organism size and an similar to 35% increase in sinking carbon flux.
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