Major restructuring of marine plankton assemblages under global warming

2021/09/01 by Fabio Benedetti, Meike Vogt, Urs Hofmann Elizondo +3 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Marine Biology and Ecology Research #Marine and coastal ecosystems #Isotope Analysis in Ecology

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-021-25385-x

openalex publication_date 2021/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Marine phytoplankton and zooplankton form the basis of the ocean's food-web, yet the impacts of climate change on their biodiversity are poorly understood. Here, we use an ensemble of species distribution models for a total of 336 phytoplankton and 524 zooplankton species to determine their present and future habitat suitability patterns. For the end of this century, under a high emission scenario, we find an overall increase in plankton species richness driven by ocean warming, and a poleward shift of the species' distributions at a median speed of 35 km/decade. Phytoplankton species richness is projected to increase by more than 16% over most regions except for the Arctic Ocean. In contrast, zooplankton richness is projected to slightly decline in the tropics, but to increase strongly in temperate to subpolar latitudes. In these latitudes, nearly 40% of the phytoplankton and zooplankton assemblages are replaced by poleward shifting species. This implies that climate change threatens the contribution of plankton communities to plankton-mediated ecosystem services such as biological carbon sequestration.

Citations

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Cited by

• Phytoplankton [wikipedia]