• Energy Research

AbstractPlanktonic Foraminifera are unique paleo-environmental indicators through their excellent fossil record in ocean sediments. Their distribution and diversity are affected by different environmental factors including anthropogenically forced ocean and climate change. Until now, historical changes in their distribution have not been fully assessed at the global scale. Here we present the FORCIS (Foraminifera Response to Climatic Stress) database on foraminiferal species diversity and distribution in the global ocean from 1910 until 2018 including published and unpublished data. The FORCIS database includes data collected using plankton tows, continuous plankton recorder, sediment traps and plankton pump, and contains ~22,000, ~157,000, ~9,000, ~400 subsamples, respectively (one single plankton aliquot collected within a depth range, time interval, size fraction range, at a single location) from each category. Our database provides a perspective of the distribution patterns of planktonic Foraminifera in the global ocean on large spatial (regional to basin scale, and at the vertical scale), and temporal (seasonal to interdecadal) scales over the past century.

AbstractCalcification and biomass production by planktonic marine organisms influences the global carbon cycle and fuels marine ecosystems. The major calcifying plankton group coccolithophores are highly diverse, comprising ca. 250–300 extant species. However, coccolithophore size (a key functional trait) and degree of calcification are poorly quantified, as most of our understanding of this group comes from a small number of species. We generated a novel reference dataset of coccolithophore morphological traits, including cell-specific data for coccosphere and cell size, coccolith size, number of coccoliths per cell, and cellular calcite content. This dataset includes observations from 1074 individual cells and represents 61 species from 25 genera spanning equatorial to temperate coccolithophore populations that were sampled during the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) 14 cruise in 2004. This unique dataset can be used to explore relationships between morphological traits (cell size and cell calcite) and environmental conditions, investigate species-specific and community contributions to pelagic carbonate production, export and plankton biomass, and inform and validate coccolithophore representation in marine ecosystem and biogeochemical models.

The marine nitrogen fixing microorganisms (diazotrophs) are a major source of nitrogen to open ocean ecosystems and are predicted to be limited by iron in most marine environments. Here we use global and targeted proteomic analyses on a key unicellular marine diazotroph Crocosphaera watsonii to reveal large scale diel changes in its proteome, including substantial variations in concentrations of iron metalloproteins involved in nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis, as well as nocturnal flavodoxin production. The daily synthesis and degradation of enzymes in coordination with their utilization results in a lowered cellular metalloenzyme inventory that requires ∼40% less iron than if these enzymes were maintained throughout the diel cycle. This strategy is energetically expensive, but appears to serve as an important adaptation for confronting the iron scarcity of the open oceans. A global numerical model of ocean circulation, biogeochemistry and ecosystems suggests that Crocosphaera ’s ability to reduce its iron-metalloenzyme inventory provides two advantages: It allows Crocosphaera to inhabit regions lower in iron and allows the same iron supply to support higher Crocosphaera biomass and nitrogen fixation than if they did not have this reduced iron requirement.

CASCADE is a global dataset for 139 extant coccolithophore taxonomic units. CASCADE includes a trait database (size and cellular organic and inorganic carbon contents) and taxonomic-specific global spatiotemporal distributions (Lat/Lon/Depth/Month/Year) of coccolithophore abundance and organic and inorganic carbon stocks. CASCADE covers all ocean basins over the upper 275 meters, spans the years 1964-2019 and includes 33,119 taxonomic-specific abundance observations. Within CASCADE, we characterise the underlying uncertainties due to measurement errors by propagating error estimates between the different studies. Full details of the data set are provided in the associated Scientific Data manuscript. The repository contains five main folders: 1) "Classification", which contains YAML files with synonyms, family-level classifications, and life cycle phase associations and definitions; 2) "Concatenated literature", which contains the merged datasets of size, PIC and POC and which were corrected for taxonomic unit synonyms; 3) "Resampled cellular datasets", which contains the resampled datasets of size, PIC and POC in long format as well as a summary table; 4) "Gridded data sets", which contains gridded datasets of abundance, PIC and POC; 5) "Species lists", which contains spreadsheets of the "common" (>20 obs) and "rare" (<20 obs) species and their number of observations. The CASCADE data set can be easily reproduced using the scripts and data provided in the associated github repository: https://github.com/nanophyto/CASCADE/ (zenodo.12797197) Correspondence to: Joost de Vries, joost.devries@bristol.ac.uk v.0.1.2 has some fixes: 1. The wrongly specified S. neapolitana was removed from synonyms.yml (this species is now S. nana)2. Longitudes were corrected for Guerreiro et al., 20233. A double entry for Dimizia et al., 2015 was fixed4. Units in Sal et al., 2013 were correct to cells/L (previously cells/ml)5. Data from Sal et al., 2013 was re-done, as some species were missing6. Duplicate entries from Baumann et al., 2000 were dropped