Phytoplankton biodiversity and the inverted paradox
Open Access
- 6 October 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in ISME Communications
- Vol. 1 (1), 1-9
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s43705-021-00056-6
Abstract
Earth’s aquatic food webs are overwhelmingly supported by planktonic microalgae that live in the sunlit water column where only a minimum number of physical niches are readily identifiable. Despite this paucity of environmental differentiation, these “phytoplankton” populations exhibit a rich biodiversity, an observation not easily reconciled with broadly accepted rules of resource-based competitive exclusion. This conundrum is referred to as the “Paradox of the Plankton”. Consideration of physical distancing between nutrient depletion zones around individual phytoplankton, however, suggests a competition-neutral resource landscape. Application of neutral theory to the sheer number of phytoplankton in physically-mixed water masses yields a prediction of astronomical biodiversity, suggesting the inverted paradox: Why are there so few phytoplankton species? Here, we introduce a trophic constraint on phytoplankton that, when combined with stochastic principals of ecological drift, predicts only modest levels of diversity in an otherwise competition-neutral landscape. Our “trophic exclusion” principle predicts diversity to be independent of population size and yields a species richness across cell-size classes that is consistent with broad oceanographic survey observations.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX15AF30G, 80NSSC17K0568, NNX15AE67G, NNX15AE67G)
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX15AF30G, 80NSSC17K0568, NNX15AE67G)
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