Carbon cycling in the deep eastern North Pacific benthic food web: Investigating the effect of organic carbon input

Dunlop, Katherine M.; Oevelen, Dick van; Ruhl, Henry A.; Huffard, Christine L.; Kuhnz, Linda A.; Smith, Kenneth L.

doi:10.1002/lno.10345

Cited by 36 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…The domination of carbon flow by bacterial cycling is similar to the functioning of the food web at other abyssal sites, including the plain at Station M in the eastern Pacific (Dunlop et al ) and the lower parts of Nazare Canyon (van Oevelen et al 2011 b ). The updated PAP plain results support the notion that the abyssal benthic community relies on a stable food source (van Oevelen et al ; Dunlop et al ), as contribution of labile detritus cycling in the food web is limited. A similar conclusion was drawn about Station M: that “older,” more stable, detritus inputs sustain a community in periods of low detrital inputs (Dunlop et al ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Differences in the carbon flows in the benthic food webs of abyssal hill and plain habitats

Durden

Ruhl

Pebody

et al. 2017

Limnology & Oceanography

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Inputs of detritus from the surface ocean are an important driver of community dynamics in the deep sea. The assessment of the flow of carbon through the benthic food web gives insight into how the community is sustained, and its resilience to fluctuations in food supply. We used a linear inverse model to compare the carbon flow through the food webs on an abyssal hill and the nearby plain at the Porcupine Abyssal Plain sustained observatory (4850 m water depth; northeast Atlantic), to examine the partitioning of detrital input in these substantially different megafaunal communities. We found minimal variation in carbon flows at the plain over two years, but differences in the detrital inputs and in the processing of that carbon input between the hill and plain habitats. Suspension feeding dominated metazoan carbon processing on the hill, removing nearly all labile detritus input to the system. By contrast, half of all labile detritus was deposited and available for deposit feeders on the abyssal plain. This suggests that the biomass on the hill is dependent on a more variable carbon supply than the plain. The presence of millions of abyssal hills globally suggests that the high benthic biomass and respiration, and reduced deposition of detritus may be pervasive, albeit with varying intensity.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Differences in the carbon flows in the benthic food webs of abyssal hill and plain habitats

Durden

Ruhl

Pebody

et al. 2017

Limnology & Oceanography

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“…BORIS (and other models; Wei et al., ) is formulated around the bulk flux of POC to the seafloor and does not consider factors such as the type or quality of the material reaching benthic communities. Benthic metazoans of a broad size range certainly directly utilize energy from high‐quality carbohydrates in rapidly sedimenting phytodetritus (Dunlop et al., ; FitzGeorge‐Balfour, Billett, Wolff, Thompson, & Tyler, ). However, the flux of material from the surface ocean will also include organic matter that has been extensively reworked in the surface and/or mesopelagic realms, which will be of much lower quality (Valls et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Big in the benthos: Future change of seafloor community biomass in a global, body size‐resolved model

Yool

Martin

Anderson

et al. 2017

Global Change Biology

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Deep-water benthic communities in the ocean are almost wholly dependent on near-surface pelagic ecosystems for their supply of energy and material resources. Primary production in sunlit surface waters is channelled through complex food webs that extensively recycle organic material, but lose a fraction as particulate organic carbon (POC) that sinks into the ocean interior. This exported production is further rarefied by microbial breakdown in the abyssal ocean, but a residual ultimately drives diverse assemblages of seafloor heterotrophs. Advances have led to an understanding of the importance of size (body mass) in structuring these communities. Here we force a size-resolved benthic biomass model, BORIS, using seafloor POC flux from a coupled ocean-biogeochemistry model, NEMO-MEDUSA, to investigate global patterns in benthic biomass. BORIS resolves 16 size classes of metazoans, successively doubling in mass from approximately 1 μg to 28 mg. Simulations find a wide range of seasonal responses to differing patterns of POC forcing, with both a decline in seasonal variability, and an increase in peak lag times with increasing body size. However, the dominant factor for modelled benthic communities is the integrated magnitude of POC reaching the seafloor rather than its seasonal pattern. Scenarios of POC forcing under climate change and ocean acidification are then applied to investigate how benthic communities may change under different future conditions. Against a backdrop of falling surface primary production (-6.1%), and driven by changes in pelagic remineralization with depth, results show that while benthic communities in shallow seas generally show higher biomass in a warmed world (+3.2%), deep-sea communities experience a substantial decline (-32%) under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. Our results underscore the importance for benthic ecology of reducing uncertainty in the magnitude and seasonality of seafloor POC fluxes, as well as the importance of studying a broader range of seafloor environments for future model development.

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“…Typically, the most wellstudied infauna are the macrofaunal polychaetes and meiofaunal nematodes and foraminifera that inhabit the upper oxygenated sediments. Through their activities, sediment-dwelling organisms create a unique mosaic of biogenic microenvironments that strongly influence carbon and nitrogen burial and remineralization rates, thus playing a key role in global biogeochemical cycles (Dunlop et al, 2016) and marine ecosystem functioning (Danovaro et al, 2008). The microfauna (i.e., protozoa) and microbes have traditionally been problematic to sample because of challenges in identification, but genetic techniques suggest massive undocumented diversity (Sinniger et al, 2016).…”

Section: Benthic Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multidisciplinary Approach for Generating Globally Consistent Data on Mesophotic, Deep-Pelagic, and Bathyal Biological Communities

Woodall¹,

Andradi-Brown²,

Brierley³

et al. 2018

Oceanog

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Carbon cycling in the deep eastern North Pacific benthic food web: Investigating the effect of organic carbon input

Cited by 36 publications

References 71 publications

Differences in the carbon flows in the benthic food webs of abyssal hill and plain habitats

Differences in the carbon flows in the benthic food webs of abyssal hill and plain habitats

Big in the benthos: Future change of seafloor community biomass in a global, body size‐resolved model

A Multidisciplinary Approach for Generating Globally Consistent Data on Mesophotic, Deep-Pelagic, and Bathyal Biological Communities

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