Publication Date:
2023-05-10
Description:
Over the last decades, it has been reported that the habitat of the Southern Ocean (SO) key species Antarctic
krill (Euphausia superba) has contracted to high latitudes, putatively due to reduced winter sea ice coverage,
while salps as Salpa thompsoni have extended their dispersal to the former krill habitats. To date, the potential
implications of this population shift on the biogeochemical cycling of the limiting micronutrient iron (Fe)
and its bioavailability to SO phytoplankton has never been tested. Based on uptake of fecal pellet (FP)-
released Fe by SO phytoplankton, this study highlights how efficiently krill and salps recycle Fe. To test
this, we collected FPs of natural populations of salps and krill, added them to the same SO phytoplankton
community, andmeasured the community’s Fe uptake rates. Our results reveal that both FP additions yielded
similar dissolved iron concentrations in the seawater. Per FP carbon added to the seawater, 4.8 ± 1.5 times
more Fe was taken up by the same phytoplankton community from salp FP than from krill FP, suggesting that
salp FP increased the Fe bioavailability, possibly through the release of ligands. With respect to the ongoing
shift from krill to salps, the potential for carbon fixation of the Fe-limited SO could be strengthened in the
future, representing a negative feedback to climate change.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Article
,
isiRev
Format:
application/pdf
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