Nutrient Cycles and Marine Microbes in a CO2-Enriched Ocean

The ocean carbon cycle is tightly linked with the cycles of the major nutrient elements nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon. It is therefore likely that enrichment of the ocean with anthropogenic CO2 and attendant acidification will have large consequences for marine nutrient biogeochemistry, and for the microbes that mediate many key nutrient transformations. The best available evidence suggests that the nitrogen cycle may respond strongly to higher CO2 through increases in global N2 fixation and possibly denitrification, as well as potential decreases in nitrification. These trends could cause nitrification to become a nitrogen cycle bottleneck, by increasing the flux of N2 fixed into ammonium while decreasing the fraction being oxidized to nitrate and nitrate. The consequences could include reduced supplies of oxidized nitrogen substrates to denitrifiers, lower levels of nitrate-supported new primary production, and expansion of the regenerated production system accompanied by shifts in current phytoplankton communities. The phosphorus and silicon cycles seem less likely to be directly affected by enhanced CO2 conditions, but will undoubtedly respond indirectly to changing carbon and nitrogen biogeochemistry. A review of culture experiments that examined the effects of increased CO2 on elemental ratios of phytoplankton suggests that for most cyanobacteria and eukaryotes, C:N and N:P ratios will either remain at Redfield values or increase substantially. Natural plankton community CO2 manipulation experiments show much more mixed outcomes, with both increases and decreases in C:N and N:P ratios reported at future CO2 levels. We conclude our review with projections of overall trends in the cycles of nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon over the next century as they respond to the steady accumulation of fossil-fuel derived CO2 in a rapidly changing ocean

Combined effects of CO 2 level, light intensity, and nutrient availability on the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi

Abstract(#br)Continuous accumulation of fossil CO 2 in the atmosphere and increasingly dissolved CO 2 in seawater leads to ocean acidification (OA), which is known to affect phytoplankton physiology directly and/or indirectly. Since increasing attention has been paid to the effects of OA under the influences of multiple drivers, in this study, we investigated effects of elevated CO 2 concentration under different levels of light and nutrients on growth rate, particulate organic (POC) and inorganic (PIC) carbon quotas of the coccolithophorid Emiliania huxleyi . We found that OA treatment (pH 7.84, CO 2 = 920 μatm) reduced the maximum growth rate at all levels of the nutrients tested, and exacerbated photo-inhibition of growth rate under reduced availability of phosphate (from 10.5 to 0.4..

A comparative study of iron and temperature interactive effects on diatoms and Phaeocystis antarctica from the Ross Sea, Antarctica

In the future, temperature and iron availability are predicted to change in the coastal polynyas of Antarctica, which are the most biologically productive regions of the Southern Ocean. We examined the individual and combined effects of iron addition (+500 nM) and temperature increase (4°C) on Phaeocystis antarctica and several dominant diatom species isolated from the McMurdo Sound sector of the Ross Sea. Iron addition increased growth, carbon fixation, iron uptake rates, cellular carbon quota, and cell size of almost all tested species, while temperature increase only affected certain species. Concurrent increases in temperature and iron synergistically stimulated the growth rates of some species, particularly Pseudo-nitzschia subcurvata. The diversified responses of these phytoplankton to iron and temperature may help explain the current spatial and temporal distributions of diatoms and prymnesiophytes in the Ross Sea. In the future, potential temperature and iron increases may promote the growth of the diatoms Chaetoceros sp., Fragilariopsis cylindrus, and especially P. subcurvata. In contrast, growth rates of P. antarctica did not increase at higher temperatures, suggesting that a shift in community composition toward diatoms may occur under warmer conditions in this biologically and biogeochemically important Southern Ocean polynya region

Comment on “The complex effects of ocean acidification on the prominent N2-fixing cyanobacterium Trichodesmium”

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science 357 (2017): eaao0067, doi:10.1126/science.aao0067.Hong et al. (Reports, 5 May 2017, p. 527) suggested that previous studies of the biogeochemically significant marine cyanobacterium Trichodesmium showing increased growth and nitrogen fixation at projected future high CO2 levels suffered from ammonia or copper toxicity. They reported that these rates instead decrease at high CO2 when contamination is alleviated. We present and discuss results of multiple published studies refuting this toxicity hypothesis

Marine Phytoplankton Temperature versus Growth Responses from Polar to Tropical Waters – Outcome of a Scientific Community-Wide Study

"It takes a village to finish (marine) science these days" Paraphrased from Curtis Huttenhower (the Human Microbiome project) The rapidity and complexity of climate change and its potential effects on ocean biota are challenging how ocean scientists conduct research. One way in which we can begin to better tackle these challenges is to conduct community-wide scientific studies. This study provides physiological datasets fundamental to understanding functional responses of phytoplankton growth rates to temperature. While physiological experiments are not new, our experiments were conducted in many laboratories using agreed upon protocols and 25 strains of eukaryotic and prokaryotic phytoplankton isolated across a wide range of marine environments from polar to tropical, and from nearshore waters to the open ocean. This community-wide approach provides both comprehensive and internally consistent datasets produced over considerably shorter time scales than conventional individual and often uncoordinated lab efforts. Such datasets can be used to parameterise global ocean model projections of environmental change and to provide initial insights into the magnitude of regional biogeographic change in ocean biota in the coming decades. Here, we compare our datasets with a compilation of literature data on phytoplankton growth responses to temperature. A comparison with prior published data suggests that the optimal temperatures of individual species and, to a lesser degree, thermal niches were similar across studies. However, a comparison of the maximum growth rate across studies revealed significant departures between this and previously collected datasets, which may be due to differences in the cultured isolates, temporal changes in the clonal isolates in cultures, and/or differences in culture conditions. Such methodological differences mean that using particular trait measurements from the prior literature might introduce unknown errors and bias into modelling projections. Using our community-wide approach we can reduce such protocol-driven variability in culture studies, and can begin to address more complex issues such as the effect of multiple environmental drivers on ocean biota.EL and MKT were in part supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grants DEB-0845932 and OCE-0928819. TAR and KAW were supported by NSF grant OCE-0727227. UP was supported by NSF grants OCE-0926711 and OCE-1041038. PWB and RS were supported by the New Zealand Royal Society Marsden Fund and the Ministry of Science and Innovation. RMK and KH were in part supported by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Monitoring and Event Response for Harmful Algal Blooms (MERHAB) grant NA04NOS4780239 and NSF grant OCE-0238347. DAH and FX-F were supported by NSF grants OCE-0942379, OCE-0962309, and OCE-117030687. MRM was partially supported by NSF grant OCE-0722395 and a NOAA The Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB) grant NA06NO54780246. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Cysteine-free Intramolecular Ligation of N-Sulfanylethylanilide Peptide Using 4-Mercaptobenzylphosphonic Acid : Synthesis of Cyclic Peptide, Trichamide

An N-sulfanylethylanilide (SEAlide)-based ligation was developed for the preparation of trichamide, a thiazole-containing cyclic peptide isolated from bloom-forming cyanobacterium Trichodesmium erythraeum. In this cysteine-free ligation, 4-mercaptobenzylphosphonic acid (MBPA) functions as a dual promoter both for the N–S acyl-transfer-mediated activation of the SEAlide unit and for subsequent ligation. Furthermore, we established a high-yielding route to enantiomerically pure thiazole amino acids using a one-pot Hantzsch process

Iron Deficiency Increases Growth and Nitrogen-Fixation Rates of Phosphorus-Deficient Marine Cyanobacteria

Marine dinitrogen (N2)-fixing cyanobacteria have large impacts on global biogeochemistry as they fix carbon dioxide (CO2) and fertilize oligotrophic ocean waters with new nitrogen. Iron (Fe) and phosphorus (P) are the two most important limiting nutrients for marine biological N2 fixation, and their availabilities vary between major ocean basins and regions. A long-standing question concerns the ability of two globally dominant N2-fixing cyanobacteria, unicellular Crocosphaera and filamentous Trichodesmium, to maintain relatively high N2-fixation rates in these regimes where both Fe and P are typically scarce. We show that under P-deficient conditions, cultures of these two cyanobacteria are able to grow and fix N2 faster when Fe deficient than when Fe replete. In addition, growth affinities relative to P increase while minimum concentrations of P that support growth decrease at low Fe concentrations. In Crocosphaera, this effect is accompanied by a reduction in cell sizes and elemental quotas. Relatively high growth rates of these two biogeochemically critical cyanobacteria in low-P, low-Fe environments such as those that characterize much of the oligotrophic ocean challenge the common assumption that low Fe levels can have only negative effects on marine primary producers. The closely interdependent influence of Fe and P on N2-fixing cyanobacteria suggests that even subtle shifts in their supply ratio in the past, present and future oceans could have large consequences for global carbon and nitrogen cycles

Continuous and comprehensive atmospheric observations in Beijing : a station to understand the complex urban atmospheric environment

Peer reviewe

An interlaboratory comparison of aerosol inorganic ion measurements by ion chromatography : Implications for aerosol pH estimate

Water-soluble inorganic ions such as ammonium, nitrate and sulfate are major components of fine aerosols in the atmosphere and are widely used in the estimation of aerosol acidity. However, different experimental practices and instrumentation may lead to uncertainties in ion concentrations. Here, an intercomparison experiment was conducted in 10 different laboratories (labs) to investigate the consistency of inorganic ion concentrations and resultant aerosol acidity estimates using the same set of aerosol filter samples. The results mostly exhibited good agreement for major ions Cl-, SO2-4, NO-3, NHC4 and KC. However, F-, Mg2C and Ca2C were observed with more variations across the different labs. The Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ACSM) data of nonrefractory SO2-4, NO-3 and NHC4 generally correlated very well with the filter-analysis-based data in our study, but the absolute concentrations differ by up to 42 %. Cl-from the two methods are correlated, but the concentration differ by more than a factor of 3. The analyses of certified reference materials (CRMs) generally showed a good detection accuracy (DA) of all ions in all the labs, the majority of which ranged between 90 % and 110 %. The DA was also used to correct the ion concentrations to showcase the importance of using CRMs for calibration check and quality control. Better agreements were found for Cl-, SO2-4, NO-3, NHC4 and KC across the labs after their concentrations were corrected with DA; the coefficient of variation (CV) of Cl-, SO2-4, NO-3, NHC4 and KC decreased by 1.7 %, 3.4 %, 3.4 %, 1.2 % and 2.6 %, respectively, after DA correction. We found that the ratio of anion to cation equivalent concentrations (AE/CE) and ion balance (anions-cations) are not good indicators for aerosol acidity estimates, as the results in different labs did not agree well with each other. In situ aerosol pH calculated from the ISORROPIA II thermodynamic equilibrium model with measured ion and ammonia concentrations showed a similar trend and good agreement across the 10 labs. Our results indicate that although there are important uncertainties in aerosol ion concentration measurements, the estimated aerosol pH from the ISORROPIA II model is more consistent

Microorganisms and ocean global change

The prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms that drive the pelagic ocean's biogeochemical cycles are currently facing an unprecedented set of comprehensive anthropogenic changes. Nearly every important control on marine microbial physiology is currently in flux, including seawater pH, pCO2, temperature, redox chemistry, irradiance and nutrient availability. Here, we examine how microorganisms with key roles in the ocean carbon and nitrogen cycles may respond to these changes in the Earth's largest ecosystem. Some functional groups such as nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria and denitrifiers may be net beneficiaries of these changes, while others such as calcifiers and nitrifiers may be negatively impacted. Other groups, such as heterotrophic bacteria, may be relatively resilient to changing conditions. The challenge for marine microbiologists will be to predict how these divergent future responses of marine microorganisms to complex multiple variable interactions will be expressed through changing biogeography, community structure and adaptive evolution, and ultimately through large-scale alterations of the ocean's carbon and nutrient cycles