The effect of light, iron and manganese supply on phytoplankton community composition in the Weddell Sea

DOI

This study highlights the importance of manganese (Mn) next to iron (Fe) for the growth of specific Southern Ocean phytoplankton groups with important implications for primary production in the Weddell Sea. Two Fe-Mn-light bottle amendment experiment were performed with a natural phytoplankton community during Polarstern expedition PS124 in 2021 in the Weddell Sea. At this location, seawater was pumped (using trace metals clean techniques) from 25m depth to fill polycarbonate bottles. The Control treatment consisted of the sampled seawater without any trace metals addition, while the other three treatments were enriched with either FeCl3 alone (0.5 nM; +Fe treatment) or MnCl2 alone (1 nM; +Mn treatment) or both trace metals together (+FeMn treatment). All treatments were done in triplicate 2,5L PC bottles under 2 light regimes (30 and 100 µmol photon m-2 s-1). After on average 7 days, samples for chlorophyll a content, particulate organic carbon, primary production flow cytometry and light microscopy were taken to detect FeMn co-limitation effect on species composition and primary production. While results showed with high confidence that both communities were Fe-limited, no evidence was found that low light provoked a stronger response to Fe supply. Nevertheless, under low light, microscopic analysis at both locations revealed Fe-Mn co-limitation of a key phytoplankton group: Fragilariopsis sp., which numerically dominated the diatom communities. Our findings highlight that in response to light limitation, some key species may suffer from Fe-Mn co-limitation with subsequent implications for the biological carbon pump.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.967722
Related Identifier References https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.957278
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.967722
Provenance
Creator Balaguer, Jenna ORCID logo; Koch, Florian ORCID logo; Trimborn, Scarlett ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2024
Funding Reference German Research Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659 Crossref Funder ID 404421353 https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/404421353 Eisen-Mangan Ko-Limitierung – ein potenzieller Kontrollfaktor der Phytoplanktonökolgie des Südpolarmeeres; German Research Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659 Crossref Funder ID 5472008 https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/5472008 Priority Programme 1158 Antarctic Research with Comparable Investigations in Arctic Sea Ice Areas
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 391 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-30.383W, -76.100S, -30.002E, -70.418N); Weddell Sea
Temporal Coverage Begin 2021-02-08T21:18:57Z
Temporal Coverage End 2021-02-28T21:39:53Z