Lopez-Urrutia Angel

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Lopez-Urrutia
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Angel
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  • Preprint
    Increasing importance of small phytoplankton in a warmer ocean
    ( 2009-03-19) Moran, Xose Anxelu G. ; Lopez-Urrutia, Angel ; Calvo-Diaz, Alejandra ; Li, William K. W.
    The macroecological relationships between marine phytoplankton total cell density, community size structure and temperature have lacked a theoretical explanation. The tiniest members of this planktonic group comprise cyanobacteria and eukaryotic algae smaller than 2 μm in diameter, collectively known as picophytoplankton. We combine here two ecological rules, the temperature-size relationship with the allometric size-scaling of population abundance to explain a remarkably consistent pattern of increasing picophytoplankton biomass with temperature over the -0.6 to 22ºC range in a merged dataset obtained in the eastern and western temperate North Atlantic Ocean across a diverse range of environmental conditions. Our results show that temperature alone was able to explain 73% of the variance in the relative contribution of small cells to total phytoplankton biomass regardless of differences in trophic status or inorganic nutrient loading. Our analysis predicts a gradual shift towards smaller primary producers in a warmer ocean. Since the fate of photosynthesized organic carbon largely depends on phytoplankton size we anticipate future alterations in the functioning of oceanic ecosystems.
  • Article
    RAPID : research on automated plankton identification
    (Oceanography Society, 2007-06) Benfield, Mark C. ; Grosjean, Philippe ; Culverhouse, Phil F. ; Irigoien, Xabier ; Sieracki, Michael E. ; Lopez-Urrutia, Angel ; Dam, Hans G. ; Hu, Qiao ; Davis, Cabell S. ; Hansen, Allen ; Pilskaln, Cynthia H. ; Riseman, Edward M. ; Schultz, Howard ; Utgoff, Paul E. ; Gorsky, Gabriel
    When Victor Hensen deployed the first true plankton1 net in 1887, he and his colleagues were attempting to answer three fundamental questions: What planktonic organisms are present in the ocean? How many of each type are present? How does the plankton’s composition change over time? Although answering these questions has remained a central goal of oceanographers, the sophisticated tools available to enumerate planktonic organisms today offer capabilities that Hensen probably could never have imagined.