Microbial gardening in the ocean's twilight zone: Detritivorous metazoans benefit from fragmenting, rather than ingesting, sinking detritus

Mayor, Daniel J.; Sanders, Richard; Giering, Sarah L. C.; Anderson, Thomas R.

doi:10.1002/bies.201400100

Cited by 83 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This new scenario of trophic pathways is not commonly found in the literature, as very little is known about pelagic detritivory. It has been proposed that zooplankton ingestion of detritus breaks up marine snow particles, facilitating bacterial degradation that, in turn, increases the nutritional value of the organic matter (Mayor et al, 2014). Although these authors focus their hypothesis on the water column below the euphotic zone, similar processes could occur in the mixed layer.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Models of Plankton Community Changes during a Warm Water Anomaly in Arctic Waters Show Altered Trophic Pathways with Minimal Changes in Carbon Export

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Carbon flow through pelagic food webs is an expression of the composition, biomass and activity of phytoplankton as primary producers. In the near future, severe environmental changes in the Arctic Ocean are expected to lead to modifications of phytoplankton communities. Here, we used a combination of linear inverse modeling and ecological network analysis to study changes in food webs before, during, and after an anomalous warm water event in the eastern Fram Strait of the West Spitsbergen Current (WSC) that resulted in a shift from diatoms to flagellates during the summer (June-July). The model predicts substantial differences in the pathways of carbon flow in diatom-vs. Phaeocystis/nanoflagellate-dominated phytoplankton communities, but relatively small differences in carbon export. The model suggests a change in the zooplankton community and activity through increasing microzooplankton abundance and the switching of meso-and macrozooplankton feeding from strict herbivory to omnivory, detritivory and coprophagy. When small cells and flagellates dominated, the phytoplankton carbon pathway through the food web was longer and the microbial loop more active. Furthermore, one step was added in the flow from phytoplankton to mesozooplankton, and phytoplankton carbon to higher trophic levels is available via detritus or microzooplankton. Model results highlight how specific changes in phytoplankton community composition, as expected in a climate change scenario, do not necessarily lead to a reduction in carbon export.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Models of Plankton Community Changes during a Warm Water Anomaly in Arctic Waters Show Altered Trophic Pathways with Minimal Changes in Carbon Export

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, their decomposition is not a simple process, but there is no evidence of longterm accumulation of those substrates in aquatic ecosystems (Gooday 1990). This suggests complex and efficient degradation pathways involving a number of interactions (Mayor et al 2014), as demonstrated in decomposing wood (Borsodi et al 2005), sediments (Cardenas et al 2008), wetlands (Ibekwe et al 2003), and bioreactors (Hiibel et al 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interspecific interactions drive chitin and cellulose degradation by aquatic microorganisms

Corno

Salka²,

Pohlmann³

et al. 2015

Aquat. Microb. Ecol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Complex biopolymers (BPs) such as chitin and cellulose provide the majority of organic carbon in aquatic ecosystems, but the mechanisms by which communities of bacteria in natural systems exploit them are unclear. Previous degradation experiments in artificial systems predominantly used microcosms containing a single bacterial species, neglecting effects of interspecific interactions. By constructing simplified aquatic microbial communities, we tested how the addition of other bacterial species, of a nanoflagellate protist capable of consuming bacteria, or of both, affect utilization of BPs. Surprisingly, total abundance of resident bacteria in mixed communities increased upon addition of the protist. Concomitantly, bacteria shifted from free-living to aggregated morphotypes that seemed to promote utilization of BPs. In our model system, these interactions significantly increased productivity in terms of overall bacterial numbers and carbon transfer efficiency. This indicates that interactions on microbial aggregates may be crucial for chitin and cellulose degradation. We therefore suggest that interspecific microbial interactions must be considered when attempting to model the turnover of the vast pool of complex biopolymers in aquatic ecosystems.

show abstract

“…Close interactions between metazoan consumers and microzooplankton have been proposed as "gardening by metazoans" through fragmenting detrital particles, promoting microbial populations (Mayor et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An exploratory study of heterotrophic protists of the mesopelagic Mediterranean Sea

Dolan

Ciobanu

Marro

et al. 2017

ICES Journal of Marine Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Is there a mesopelagic protist fauna composed of species different from that of the overlying surface community? Does the mesopelagic community show seasonal changes in abundances and species composition? We addressed these questions by considering three distinct groups in which species identification is relatively unambiguous: tintinnid ciliates, phaeodarian radiolarians, and amphisolenid dinoflagellates. We sampled weekly at 250 m and 30 m depth from January to June a deep-water coastal site characterized by seasonal changes in water column structure; notably, in winter the mixed layer extends down into mesopelagic depths. We found a deep-water community of tintinnid ciliates comprised of forms apparently restricted to deep waters and species also found in the surface layer. This latter group was dominant during the winter mixis period when tintinnid concentrations were highest and subsequently declined with water column stratification. Phaeodarian radiolarians and the amphisolenid dinoflagellates were regularly found in deep samples but were largely absent from surface water samples and showed distinct patterns in the mesopelagic. Phaeodarian radiolarians declined with water column mixing and then increased in concentration with water column stratification whilst amphisolenid dinoflagellates concentrations showed no pattern but species composition varied. We conclude that for all three protists groups there appear to be both distinct mesopelagic forms and seasonal patterns.

show abstract

Microbial gardening in the ocean's twilight zone: Detritivorous metazoans benefit from fragmenting, rather than ingesting, sinking detritus

Cited by 83 publications

References 51 publications

Models of Plankton Community Changes during a Warm Water Anomaly in Arctic Waters Show Altered Trophic Pathways with Minimal Changes in Carbon Export

Models of Plankton Community Changes during a Warm Water Anomaly in Arctic Waters Show Altered Trophic Pathways with Minimal Changes in Carbon Export

Interspecific interactions drive chitin and cellulose degradation by aquatic microorganisms

An exploratory study of heterotrophic protists of the mesopelagic Mediterranean Sea

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About