Zooplankton vertical migration and the active transport of dissolved organic and inorganic carbon in the Sargasso Sea

Steinberg, Deborah K.; Carlson, Craig A.; Bates, Nicholas R.; Goldthwait, Sarah A.; Madin, Laurence P.; Michaels, Anthony F.

doi:10.1016/s0967-0637(99)00052-7

Cited by 394 publications

(363 citation statements)

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“…In addition to sinking particles, crustaceans and other zooplankton likely influence the subsurface communities by consuming organisms and marine aggregates at the surface and egesting rapidly sinking fecal pellets, in conjunction with diel vertical migration (Steinberg et al, 2000(Steinberg et al, , 2002Wilson and Steinberg, 2010). Other organisms that may transport nutrients or bacteria include cnidarians (Schnetzer et al, 2011) and larvaceans (Hansen, et al, 1996, Robison et al, 2005.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal and interannual variability of the marine bacterioplankton community throughout the water column over ten years

et al. 2014

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Microbial activities that affect global oceanographic and atmospheric processes happen throughout the water column, yet the long-term ecological dynamics of microbes have been studied largely in the euphotic zone and adjacent seasonally mixed depths. We investigated temporal patterns in the community structure of free-living bacteria, by sampling approximately monthly from 5 m, the deep chlorophyll maximum (B15-40 m), 150, 500 and 890 m, in San Pedro Channel (maximum depth 900 m, hypoxic below B500 m), off the coast of Southern California. Community structure and biodiversity (inverse Simpson index) showed seasonal patterns near the surface and bottom of the water column, but not at intermediate depths. Inverse Simpson's index was highest in the winter in surface waters and in the spring at 890 m, and varied interannually at all depths. Biodiversity appeared to be driven partially by exchange of microbes between depths and was highest when communities were changing slowly over time. Meanwhile, communities from the surface through 500 m varied interannually. After accounting for seasonality, several environmental parameters co-varied with community structure at the surface and 890 m, but not at the intermediate depths.Abundant and seasonally variable groups included, at 890 m, Nitrospina, Flavobacteria and Marine Group A. Seasonality at 890 m is likely driven by variability in sinking particles, which originate in surface waters, pass transiently through the middle water column and accumulate on the seafloor where they alter the chemical environment. Seasonal subeuphotic groups are likely those whose ecology is strongly influenced by these particles. This surface-to-bottom, decade-long, study identifies seasonality and interannual variability not only of overall community structure, but also of numerous taxonomic groups and near-species level operational taxonomic units.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal and interannual variability of the marine bacterioplankton community throughout the water column over ten years

et al. 2014

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“…A fraction of that phytoplankton carbon is exported from the surface ocean either as sinking fecal pellets or as aggregates that are created from the pool of suspended POC and PIC by physical and foodweb processes (e.g., Stemmann et al, 2004;Buesseler and Boyd, 2009). Zooplankton also contribute to export through their diurnal and seasonal migrations from the EZ to several 100 m's deeper into the twilight zone (TZ), where carbon consumed at the surface is subsequently respired as CO 2 , excreted as DOC or released as fecal pellets (e.g., Steinberg et al, 2000;Bianchi et al, 2013;Jónasdóttir et al, 2015). Further in the TZ, a host of remineralization processes driven by bacteria and zooplankton recycle sinking and suspended organic matter, further influencing the attenuation of the vertical carbon flux (e.g., Carlson et al, 2004;Steinberg et al, 2008;Burd et al, 2010;Giering, 2014;Collins et al, 2015).…”

Section: Fate Of Net Primary Production and The Ocean's Carbon Cyclementioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of the Export and Fate of Global Ocean Net Primary Production: The EXPORTS Science Plan

et al. 2016

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Ocean ecosystems play a critical role in the Earth's carbon cycle and the quantification of their impacts for both present conditions and for predictions into the future remains one of the greatest challenges in oceanography. The goal of the EXport Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing (EXPORTS) Science Plan is to develop a predictive understanding of the export and fate of global ocean net primary production (NPP) and its implications for present and future climates. The achievement of this goal requires a quantification of the mechanisms that control the export of carbon from the euphotic zone as well as its fate in the underlying "twilight zone" where some fraction of exported carbon will be sequestered in the ocean's interior on time scales of months to millennia. Here we present a measurement/synthesis/modeling framework aimed at quantifying the fates of upper ocean NPP and its impacts on the global carbon cycle based upon the EXPORTS Science Plan. The proposed approach will diagnose relationships among the ecological, biogeochemical, and physical oceanographic processes that control carbon cycling across a range of ecosystem and carbon cycling states leading to advances in satellite diagnostic and numerical prognostic models. To collect these data, a combination of ship and robotic field sampling, satellite remote sensing, and numerical modeling is proposed which enables the sampling of the many pathways of NPP export and fates. This coordinated, process-oriented approach has the potential to foster new insights on ocean carbon cycling that maximizes its societal relevance through the achievement of research goals of many international research agencies and will be a key step toward our understanding of the Earth as an integrated system.

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“…Owing to the absence of mixing between depths, it is most likely that sinking particles (Collins et al, 2011) and/or migrating organisms (Steinberg et al, 2000(Steinberg et al, , 2002Wilson and Steinberg, 2010;Schnetzer et al, 2011) link microbial communities at different depths. Given that the vast majority of lagged correlations between depths are 'downward', a likely mechanism would be that sinking particles transport nutrients from the surface, which are in turn utilized by the communities at depth.…”

Section: Time-lagged Statistical Associations Suggest Links Between Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-depth analysis of marine bacterial networks suggests downward propagation of temporal changes

et al. 2015

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Interactions among microbes and stratification across depths are both believed to be important drivers of microbial communities, though little is known about how microbial associations differ between and across depths. We have monitored the free-living microbial community at the San Pedro Ocean Time-series station, monthly, for a decade, at five different depths: 5 m, the deep chlorophyll maximum layer, 150 m, 500 m and 890 m (just above the sea floor). Here, we introduce microbial association networks that combine data from multiple ocean depths to investigate both within-and between-depth relationships, sometimes time-lagged, among microbes and environmental parameters. The euphotic zone, deep chlorophyll maximum and 890 m depth each contain two negatively correlated 'modules' (groups of many inter-correlated bacteria and environmental conditions) suggesting regular transitions between two contrasting environmental states. Two-thirds of pairwise correlations of bacterial taxa between depths lagged such that changes in the abundance of deeper organisms followed changes in shallower organisms. Taken in conjunction with previous observations of seasonality at 890 m, these trends suggest that planktonic microbial communities throughout the water column are linked to environmental conditions and/or microbial communities in overlying waters. Poorly understood groups including Marine Group A, Nitrospina and AEGEAN-169 clades contained taxa that showed diverse association patterns, suggesting these groups contain multiple ecological species, each shaped by different factors, which we have started to delineate. These observations build upon previous work at this location, lending further credence to the hypothesis that sinking particles and vertically migrating animals transport materials that significantly shape the time-varying patterns of microbial community composition.

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Zooplankton vertical migration and the active transport of dissolved organic and inorganic carbon in the Sargasso Sea

Cited by 394 publications

References 59 publications

Seasonal and interannual variability of the marine bacterioplankton community throughout the water column over ten years

Seasonal and interannual variability of the marine bacterioplankton community throughout the water column over ten years

Prediction of the Export and Fate of Global Ocean Net Primary Production: The EXPORTS Science Plan

Cross-depth analysis of marine bacterial networks suggests downward propagation of temporal changes

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