SHORT- VERSUS LONG-TERM RESPONSES TO CHANGING CO^sub 2^ IN A COASTAL DINOFLAGELLATE BLOOM: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERSPECIFIC COMPETITIVE INTERACTIONS AND COMMUNITY STRUCTURE

Increasing pCO... (partial pressure of CO...) in an "acidified" ocean will affect phytoplankton community structure, but manipulation experiments with assemblages briefly acclimated to simulated future conditions may not accurately predict the long-term evolutionary shifts that could affec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolution 2013-07, Vol.67 (7), p.1879
Main Authors: Tatters, Avery O, Schnetzer, Astrid, Fu, Feixue, Lie, Alle YA, Caron, David A, Hutchins, David A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acidity
Carbon dioxide
Climate change
Oceans
Plankton
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Summary:Increasing pCO... (partial pressure of CO...) in an "acidified" ocean will affect phytoplankton community structure, but manipulation experiments with assemblages briefly acclimated to simulated future conditions may not accurately predict the long-term evolutionary shifts that could affect inter-specific competitive success. We assessed community structure changes in a natural mixed dinoflagellate bloom incubated at three pCO... levels (230, 433, and 765 ppm) in a short-term experiment (2 weeks). The four dominant species were then isolated from each treatment into clonal cultures, and maintained at all three pCO... levels for approximately 1 year. Periodically (4, 8, and 12 months), these pCO...-conditioned clones were recombined into artificial communities, and allowed to compete at their conditioning pCO... level or at higher and lower levels. The dominant species in these artificial communities of CO...-conditioned clones differed from those in the original short-term experiment, but individual species relative abundance trends across pCO... treatments were often similar. Specific growth rates showed no strong evidence for fitness increases attributable to conditioning pCO... level. Although pCO... significantly structured our experimental communities, conditioning time and biotic interactions like mixotrophy also had major roles in determining competitive outcomes. New methods of carrying out extended mixed species experiments are needed to accurately predict future long-term phytoplankton community responses to changing pCO... (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
ISSN:0014-3820
1558-5646