A phytoplankton model for the allocation of gross photosynthetic energy including the trade‐offs of diazotrophy
Date
2018-06-18Author
Nicholson, David P.
Concept link
Stanley, Rachel H. R.
Concept link
Doney, Scott C.
Concept link
Metadata
Show full item recordCitable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/10512As published
https://doi.org/10.1029/2017JG004263DOI
10.1029/2017JG004263Abstract
Gross photosynthetic activity by phytoplankton is directed to linear and alternative electron pathways that generate ATP, reductant, and fix carbon. Ultimately less than half is directed to net growth. Here we present a phytoplankton cell allocation model that explicitly represents a number of cell metabolic processes and functional pools with the goal of evaluating ATP and reductant demands as a function of light, nitrate, iron, oxygen, and temperature for diazotrophic versus nondiazotrophic growth. We employ model analogues of Synechoccocus and Crocosphaera watsonii, to explore the trade‐offs of diazotrophy over a range of environmental conditions. Model analogues are identical in construction, except for an iron quota associated with nitrogenase, an additional respiratory demand to remove oxygen in order to protect nitrogenase and an additional ATP demand to split dinitrogen. We find that these changes explain observed differences in growth rate and iron limitation between diazotrophs and nondiazotrophs. Oxygen removal imparted a significantly larger metabolic cost to diazotrophs than ATP demand for fixing nitrogen. Results suggest that diazotrophs devote a much smaller fraction of gross photosynthetic energy to growth than nondiazotrophs. The phytoplankton cell allocation model model provides a predictive framework for how photosynthate allocation varies with environmental conditions in order to balance cellular demands for ATP and reductant across phytoplankton functional groups.
Description
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 123 (2018): 1796-1816, doi:10.1029/2017JG004263.
Collections
Suggested Citation
Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 123 (2018): 1796-1816Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Resource allocation by the marine cyanobacterium Synechococcus WH8102 in response to different nutrient supply ratios
Mouginot, Céline; Zimmerman, Amy E.; Bonachela, Juan A.; Fredricks, Helen F.; Allison, Steven D.; Van Mooy, Benjamin A. S.; Martiny, Adam C. (2015-05)Differences in relative availability of nitrate vs. phosphate may contribute to regional variations in plankton elemental stoichiometry. As a representative of the globally abundant marine Synechococcus, strain WH8102 ... -
Incident radiation and the allocation of nitrogen within Arctic plant canopies : implications for predicting gross primary productivity
Street, Lorna E.; Shaver, Gaius R.; Rastetter, Edward B.; van Wijk, Mark T.; Kaye, Brooke A.; Williams, Mathew (2012-01)Arctic vegetation is characterized by high spatial variability in plant functional type (PFT) composition and gross primary productivity (P). Despite this variability, the two main drivers of P in sub-Arctic tundra are ... -
Egg sizes and macromere allocation for diverse annelids and molluscs
Pernet, Bruno (Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). Contact: bco-dmo-data@whoi.edu, 2019-08-02)Egg sizes and macromere allocation for annelids and molluscs used in a comparative analysis of allocation of cytoplasm to macromeres. Many of these data were obtained from the literature, but some were obtained directly ...