Southern Ocean Climate Change
Climate change is already impacting vulnerable ecosystems, such as the Southern Ocean, which includes the waters around Antarctica. Primary producers (phytoplankton) form the foundation of the food web. As the climate continues to change, the Southern Ocean food web will be exposed to changes in temperature, pH (caused by changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide), light levels, nutrients, and iron, among others. In 2015, we published work investigating the impacts of projected climate change on a single species of Southern Ocean phytoplankton - Pseudo-nitzschia multiseries. Our most recent work uncovers the impacts of climate change on the phytoplankton community in the Southern Ocean to better understand the in situ community response and better forecast ecosystem impacts of climate change.
Southern Ocean phytoplankton communities were incubated in 600L mescosms mimicking current/control conditions or projected future climate change conditions in the year 2100 (elevated CO2, temperature, iron, and light; decreased nutrients) for 7 days. MetaGOmics was used to analyze the significantly changing peptides on day 7 (see Figure on right). Blue and orange bars represent total peptide spectral matches in control and year 2100 incubations, respectively. Stacked bars represent the taxonomic contribution to the peptide associated with the significantly changing Gene Ontology terms, listed on the far right.
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Photosynthesis is significantly impacted by climate change.
In both physiological metrics and metaproteomics data, photosynthesis was revealed to be significantly impacted by climate change. Photosynthesis-related GO terms were among those significantly elevated in the control, compared to the year 2100 treatment (above). On the left, the abundances of proteins involved in photosynthesis are shown throughout the incubation. Many of these proteins have different abundance profiles between the two treatments, suggesting differential regulation of the photosynthetic process. |