Funded by NERC NE/K001833/1 ‘Oceans 2025’Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Alldredge

Alonso-González

Bell

Boyd

Calow

Clark

Cossins

Cowie

Dall

de Baar

del Giorgio

Fenchel

Fileman

Giering

González

Hazel

Henson

Hylleberg

Iversen

Jackson

Jøstensen

Kattner

Klein Breteler

Koski

Kwon

Lampitt

Leschine

Mayor

Noji

Pakulsky

Parrish

Phillips

Plante

Pond

Riley

Sano

Sochard

Steinberg

Straile

Turner

Visser

Wilson

BioEssays

English

PubMed

Sinking organic particles transfer ?10?gigatonnes of carbon into the deep ocean each year, keeping the atmospheric CO2 concentration significantly lower than would otherwise be the case. The exact size of this effect is strongly influenced by biological activity in the ocean's twilight zone (?50–1,000?m beneath the surface). Recent work suggests that the resident zooplankton fragment, rather than ingest, the majority of encountered organic particles, thereby stimulating bacterial proliferation and the deep-ocean microbial food web. Here we speculate that this apparently counterintuitive behaviour is an example of ‘microbial gardening’, a strategy that exploits the enzymatic and biosynthetic capabilities of microorganisms to facilitate the ‘gardener's’ access to a suite of otherwise unavailable compounds that are essential for metazoan life. We demonstrate the potential gains that zooplankton stand to make from microbial gardening using a simple steady state model, and we suggest avenues for future research

Mayor, Daniel J.

Sanders, Richard

Giering, Sarah L.C.

Anderson, Thomas R.

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

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

Funded by NERC NE/K001833/1 ‘Oceans 2025’Peer reviewe

Giering, Sarah L C

Anderson, Thomas R

Aberdeen University Research

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

Sinking organic particles transfer ∼10 gigatonnes of carbon into the deep ocean each year, keeping the atmospheric CO2 concentration significantly lower than would otherwise be the case. The exact size of this effect is strongly influenced by biological activity in the ocean's twilight zone (∼50–1,000 m beneath the surface). Recent work suggests that the resident zooplankton fragment, rather than ingest, the majority of encountered organic particles, thereby stimulating bacterial proliferation and the deep-ocean microbial food web. Here we speculate that this apparently counterintuitive behaviour is an example of ‘microbial gardening’, a strategy that exploits the enzymatic and biosynthetic capabilities of microorganisms to facilitate the ‘gardener's’ access to a suite of otherwise unavailable compounds that are essential for metazoan life. We demonstrate the potential gains that zooplankton stand to make from microbial gardening using a simple steady state model, and we suggest avenues for future research

NERC Open Research Archive

Daniel J. Mayor

Richard Sanders

Sarah L. C. Giering

Thomas R. Anderson

Crossref

http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/508424/1/bies201400100-Mayor.pdf

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

Abstract

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Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

Aberdeen University Research

NERC Open Research Archive

Crossref