Characteristic Sizes of Life in the Oceans, from Bacteria to Whales

Andersen, Ken Haste; Berge, Terje; Gonçalves, Rodrigo J.; Hartvig, Martin; Heuschele, Jan; Hylander, Samuel; Jacobsen, Nis Sand; Lindemann, Christian; Martens, Erik Andreas; Neuheimer, Anna B.; Olsson, Karin H.; Palacz, Artur; Prowe, A. E. Friederike; Sainmont, Julie; Traving, Sachia J.; Visser, André W.; Wadhwa, Navish; Kiørboe, Thomas

doi:10.1146/annurev-marine-122414-034144

Cited by 204 publications

(209 citation statements)

References 78 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

185

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Most fish larvae are visual predators and their size is therefore limited by the smallest size of a functional camera eye, which has a diameter around 1 mm (Martens et al 2015; an exception may include cave fish larvae that undergo eye degeneration as they develop; Yoshizawa and Jeffrey 2008). Organisms smaller than fish larvae, such as copepods, rely on tactile sensing to locate prey (Tiselius et al 2013, Andersen et al 2016. Similarly, fish larvae feed using suction, but due to scaling of the hydromechanics of suction-feeding at low Reynolds numbers, suctionfeeding becomes ineffective for fish larvae smaller than about 1 cm (China and Holzman 2014).…”

Section: Invariant Offspring-size Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Adult and offspring size in the ocean over 17 orders of magnitude follows two life history strategies

Neuheimer

Hartvig

Heuschele

et al. 2015

Ecology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

. (2015). Adult and offspring size in the ocean over 17 orders of magnitude follows two life history strategies. Ecology, 96(12), 3303-3311. DOI: 10.1890/14-2491.1 Ecology, 96(12), 2015Ecology, 96(12), , pp. 3303-3311 Ó 2015 Abstract. Explaining variability in offspring vs. adult size among groups is a necessary step to determine the evolutionary and environmental constraints shaping variability in life history strategies. This is of particular interest for life in the ocean where a diversity of offspring development strategies is observed along with variability in physical and biological forcing factors in space and time. We compiled adult and offspring size for 407 pelagic marine species covering more than 17 orders of magnitude in body mass including Cephalopoda, Cnidaria, Crustaceans, Ctenophora, Elasmobranchii, Mammalia, Sagittoidea, and Teleost. We find marine life following one of two distinct strategies, with offspring size being either proportional to adult size (e.g., Crustaceans, Elasmobranchii, and Mammalia) or invariant with adult size (e.g., Cephalopoda, Cnidaria, Sagittoidea, Teleosts, and possibly Ctenophora). We discuss where these two strategies occur and how these patterns (along with the relative size of the offspring) may be shaped by physical and biological constraints in the organism's environment. This adaptive environment along with the evolutionary history of the different groups shape observed life history strategies and possible group-specific responses to changing environmental conditions (e.g., production and distribution).

show abstract

Section: Invariant Offspring-size Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Adult and offspring size in the ocean over 17 orders of magnitude follows two life history strategies

Neuheimer

Hartvig

Heuschele

et al. 2015

Ecology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Under such circumstances investment should rather be directed toward chloroplasts. The nature of such co-limitations and associated trade-offs is likely to be size dependent (Andersen et al, 2015(Andersen et al, , 2016. Another kind of trade-off mechanism emerges if nutrient transporters are entry points for viral attacks (Menge and Weitz, 2009) which also affect optimal transporter density.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling Laws in Phytoplankton Nutrient Uptake Affinity

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nutrient uptake affinity affects the competitive ability of microbial organisms at low nutrient concentrations. From the theory of diffusion limitation it follows that uptake affinity scales linearly with the cell radius. This is in conflict with some observations suggesting that uptake affinity scales to a quantity that is closer to the square of the radius, i.e., to cell surface area. We show that this apparent conflict can be resolved by nutrient uptake theory. Pure diffusion limitation assumes that the cell is a perfect sink which means that it is able to absorb all encountered nutrients instantaneously. Here, we provide empirical evidence that the perfect sink strategy is not common in phytoplankton. Although, small cells are indeed favored by a large surface to volume ratio, we show that they are punished by higher relative investment cost in order to fully benefit from the larger surface to volume ratio. We show that there are two reasons for this. First, because the small cells need a higher transporter density (p) in order to maximize their affinity, and second because the relative cost of a transporter is higher for a small than for a large cell. We suggest, that this might explain why observed uptake affinities do not scale linearly with the cell radius.

show abstract

“…The distribution of biomass along the size dimension is known to be positively skewed (i.e. an asymmetrical size distribution with a pronounced right tail compared to its left tail), due to physiological, morphological, and ecological constraints that limit phytoplankton from a minimum size of around 0.15 µm ESD to a maximum size of about 575 µm ESD (Marañón, 2015;Andersen et al, 2015). Consequently, we assume a log-normal distribution of size to represent the size of each morphotype, thus transforming the cell size S i as follows: L i = ln(S i ).…”

Section: Dynamics Of the Full Phytoplankton Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Phytoplankton size also impacts on many ecological and physiological functions and is linked to other relevant traits via trade-off relationships (see reviews by Litchman and Klausmeier, 2008;Litchman et al, 2010;Finkel et al, 2010). Therefore, studies on how cell size is associated with ecological and physiological processes and on the impact that these associations have on the structure and functioning of planktonic communities are of fundamental importance (Marañón, 2015;Andersen et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

PhytoSFDM version 1.0.0: Phytoplankton Size and Functional Diversity Model

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Biodiversity is one of the key mechanisms that facilitate the adaptive response of planktonic communities to a fluctuating environment. How to allow for such a flexible response in marine ecosystem models is, however, not entirely clear. One particular way is to resolve the natural complexity of phytoplankton communities by explicitly incorporating a large number of species or plankton functional types. Alternatively, models of aggregate community properties focus on macroecological quantities such as total biomass, mean trait, and trait variance (or functional trait diversity), thus reducing the observed natural complexity to a few mathematical expressions. We developed the PhytoSFDM modelling tool, which can resolve species discretely and can capture aggregate community properties. The tool also provides a set of methods for treating diversity under realistic oceanographic settings. This model is coded in Python and is distributed as open-source software. PhytoSFDM is implemented in a zerodimensional physical scheme and can be applied to any location of the global ocean. We show that aggregate community models reduce computational complexity while preserving relevant macroecological features of phytoplankton communities. Compared to species-explicit models, aggregate models are more manageable in terms of number of equations and have faster computational times. Further developments of this tool should address the caveats associated with the assumptions of aggregate community models and about implementations into spatially resolved physical settings (onedimensional and three-dimensional). With PhytoSFDM we embrace the idea of promoting open-source software and encourage scientists to build on this modelling tool to further improve our understanding of the role that biodiversity plays in shaping marine ecosystems.

show abstract

Characteristic Sizes of Life in the Oceans, from Bacteria to Whales

Cited by 204 publications

References 78 publications

Adult and offspring size in the ocean over 17 orders of magnitude follows two life history strategies

Adult and offspring size in the ocean over 17 orders of magnitude follows two life history strategies

Scaling Laws in Phytoplankton Nutrient Uptake Affinity

PhytoSFDM version 1.0.0: Phytoplankton Size and Functional Diversity Model

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About