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Nutrient availability regulates the microbial biomass structure in marine oligotrophic waters

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Abstract

In oligotrophic oceans, trophic transfer at the base of pelagic food webs is driven by shifts in biomass ratios of plankton microbial groups, which determine dominant nutrition modes, i.e., autotrophy and heterotrophy. Understanding how the physical environment impacts transient spatial patterns of these communities is essential to quantify productivity of plankton food webs. Using data from a coast-offshore field expedition in the Southwestern Tropical Atlantic, we assess the influence of nutrient limitation and contrasting hydrological settings on spatial patterns and biomass ratios of pico- and nanoplankton. The results showed an overall nitrogen-limited nutritional environment that lessens autotrophic growth while favoring the dominance of heterotrophic bacteria biomass. Offshore, this configuration is however altered in the deep chlorophyll maximum due to an enhanced nutrient availability promoted by a shallowing of the nutricline, which favors an increase in picoeukaryotes biomass. Autotrophic cells showed different distributions over the coast-offshore transect. Synechococcus and pigmented nanoflagellates had higher biomass on the shelf, while Prochlorococcus dominated the entire region and picoeukaryotes had higher biomass offshore. Overall, our results pinpoint the importance of heterotrophic biomass in the plankton microbial community, providing novel clues for understanding the carbon transport in oligotrophic marine ecosystems.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available on SEANOE under the doi: https://doi.org/10.17882/95241; https://doi.org/10.17882/95172; https://doi.org/10.17882/76696.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to express our thanks to the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) and the CAPES-PRINT program for the concession of the first author’s scholarships (88882.379302/2019-01; 88887.685774/2022-00), and the IMAGO lab who realized the HPLC and nutrients analysis. We acknowledge the French oceanographic fleet for funding the survey ABRACOS and the officers, crew, and scientific team of the R/V Antea for their contribution to the success of the operations.

Funding

This work is a contribution to the INCT BAA (https://www.bioamazoniaazul.com), LMI TAPIOCA (www.tapioca.ird.fr), CAPES/COFECUB Program (88881.142689/2017-01), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 projects PADDLE (Grant Agreement No. 73427) and TRIATLAS (Grant Agreement No. 817578).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Oceanografia, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Avenida Arquitetura, S/N, Recife, PE, 50670-901, Brazil

    Gabriel Bittencourt Farias, Pedro Augusto Mendes de Castro Melo & Arnaud Bertrand

  2. MARBEC, Université Montpellier, IRD, Ifremer CNRS, Montpellier, France

    Gabriel Bittencourt Farias, Arnaud Bertrand, Claire Carré, Béatrice Bec & Juan-Carlos Molinero

  3. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía (UNS-CONICET), B8000FWB, Bahía Blanca, Argentina

    María Celeste López-Abbate

  4. Departamento de Pesca e Aquicultura, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil

    Arnaud Bertrand

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  1. Gabriel Bittencourt Farias
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  2. Pedro Augusto Mendes de Castro Melo
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Correspondence to Gabriel Bittencourt Farias.

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Farias, G.B., Melo, P.A.M.d.C., López-Abbate, M.C. et al. Nutrient availability regulates the microbial biomass structure in marine oligotrophic waters. Hydrobiologia 851, 1923–1938 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-023-05427-9

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