Linking plankton size spectra and community composition to carbon export and its efficiency
Authors: Serra-Pompei Camila , Ward Ben A. , Pinti Jérôme , Visser André W. , Kiørboe Thomas , Andersen Ken H. 
Published: March 2021

The magnitude and efficiency of particulate carbon export from the ocean surface depends not only on net primary production (NPP) but also on how carbon is consumed, respired, and repackaged by organisms. We contend that several of these processes can be captured by the size spectrum of the plankton community. However, most global models have relatively simple food-web structures that are unable to generate plankton sizespectra. Moreover, the life-cycles of multicellular zooplankton are typically not resolved, restricting the ability of models to represent time-lags that are known to impact carbon export and its efficiency (pe-ratio). Here, we use a global mechanistic size-spectrum model of the marine plankton community to investigate how particulate export and pe-ratio relate to the community size spectrum, community composition, and time-lags between predators and prey. The model generates emergent food-webs with associated size distributions for organisms and detrital particles. To resolve time-lags between phytoplankton and zooplankton, we implement the life-cycle of multicellular zooplankton (here represented by copepods). The simulation successfully captures observed patterns in biomass and energy fluxes across regions. We find that carbon export correlates best with copepod biomass and trophic level, whereas the pe-ratio correlates best with the exponent of the size spectrum and sea surface temperature (SST). Community metrics performed better than NPP or SST for both deep export and pe-ratio. Time-lags between phytoplankton and copepods did not strongly affect export or pe-ratio. We conclude by discussing how can we reconcile size-spectrum theory with field sampling.

Plain Language Summary

Plankton are tiny but extremely abundant aquatic organisms. Plankton lock CO2away from the atmosphere as they sink to the deep ocean, where carbon can be stored for hundreds of years. However, how much carbon is locked away and for how long depends on how organisms eat, defecate, and respire. We argue that these processes are reflected in the size composition of the plankton community. The size composition shows a clear relationship between the number of organisms and their body-size. The steepness of this “size-abundance relationship” describes the balance between small vs. large organisms, and has been argued to reflect how energy is transferred from small to large organisms. Since large organisms create fast-sinking particles, the size-abundance relationship could be used to estimate how much carbon is being stored in the deep ocean. Here we use a computer simulation of the global plankton community to investigate how the removal of carbon relates to the plankton community and the steepness of the sizeabundance relationship. The model successfully captures patterns observed in nature. We found that the size-abundance relationship, together with the quantity of large zooplankton better explained carbon export than other measures typically used, such as photosynthesis and temperature.

Key Points

We use a global mechanistic size-spectrum model to investigate the relation between particulate export and plankton community metrics.

We find a good correlation between export efficiency and the exponent of the size spectrum.

Total carbon export correlated well with copepod biomass and trophic level of active copepods in the model.