ALBERT

Description: We investigated the impacts of predicted ocean acidification and future warming on the quantity and nutritional quality of a natural phytoplankton autumn bloom in a mesocosm experiment. Since the effects of CO2-enrichment and temperature have usually been studied independently, we were also interested in the interactive effects of both aspects of climate change. Therefore, we used a factorial design with two temperature and two acidification levels in a mesocosm experiment with a Baltic Sea phytoplankton community. Our results show a significant time-dependent influence of warming on phytoplankton carbon, chlorophyll a as well as POC. Phytoplankton carbon for instance decreased by more than a half with increasing temperature at bloom time. Additionally, elemental carbon to phosphorus ratios (C:P) increased significantly by approximately 5-8 % under warming. Impacts of CO2 or synergetic effects of warming and acidification could not be detected. We suggest that temperature-induced stronger grazing pressure was responsible for the significant decline in phytoplankton biomass. Our results suggest that biological effects of warming on Baltic Sea phytoplankton are considerable and will likely have fundamental consequences for the trophic transfer in the pelagic food-web.

Description: Concerns about increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global warming have initiated studies on the consequences of multiple-stressor interactions on marine organisms and ecosystems. We present a fully-crossed factorial mesocosm study and assess how warming and acidification affect the abundance, body size, and fatty acid composition of copepods as a measure of nutritional quality. The experimental set-up allowed us to determine whether the effects of warming and acidification act additively, synergistically, or antagonistically on the abundance, body size, and fatty acid content of copepods, a major group of lower level consumers in marine food webs. Copepodite (developmental stages 1-5) and nauplii abundance were antagonistically affected by warming and acidification. Higher temperature decreased copepodite and nauplii abundance, while acidification partially compensated for the temperature effect. The abundance of adult copepods was negatively affected by warming. The prosome length of copepods was significantly reduced by warming, and the interaction of warming and CO2 antagonistically affected prosome length. Fatty acid composition was also significantly affected by warming. The content of saturated fatty acids increased, and the ratios of the polyunsaturated essential fatty acids docosahexaenoic- (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) to total fatty acid content increased with higher temperatures. Additionally, here was a significant additive interaction effect of both parameters on arachidonic acid. Our results indicate that in a future ocean scenario, acidification might partially counteract some observed effects of increased temperature on zooplankton, while adding to others. These may be results of a fertilizing effect on phytoplankton as a copepod food source. In summary, copepod populations will be more strongly affected by warming rather than by acidifying oceans, but ocean acidification effects can modify some temperature impacts

Description: Global warming and ocean acidification are among the most important stressors for aquatic ecosystems in the future. To investigate their direct and indirect effects on a near-natural plankton community, a multiple-stressor approach is needed. Hence, we set up mesocosms in a full-factorial design to study the effects of both warming and high CO2 on a Baltic Sea autumn plankton community, concentrating on the impacts on microzooplankton (MZP). MZP abundance, biomass, and species composition were analysed over the course of the experiment. We observed that warming led to a reduced time-lag between the phytoplankton bloom and an MZP biomass maximum. MZP showed a significantly higher growth rate and an earlier biomass peak in the warm treatments while the biomass maximum was not affected. Increased pCO2 did not result in any significant effects on MZP biomass, growth rate, or species composition irrespective of the temperature, nor did we observe any significant interactions between CO2 and temperature. We attribute this to the high tolerance of this estuarine plankton community to fluctuations in pCO2, often resulting in CO2 concentrations higher than the predicted end-of-century concentration for open oceans. In contrast, warming can be expected to directly affect MZP and strengthen its coupling with phytoplankton by enhancing its grazing pressure.

Description: While the isolated responses of marine phytoplankton to climate warming and to ocean acidification have been studies intensively, studies on the combined effect of both aspects of Global Change are still scarce. Therefore, we performed a mesocosm experiment with a factorial combination of temperature (9 and 15°C) and pCO2 (560 ppm and 1400 ppm) with a natural autumn plankton community from the western Baltic Sea. Temporal trajectories of total biomass and of the biomass of the most important higher taxa followed similar patterns in all treatments. When averaging over the entire time course, phytoplankton biomass decreased with warming and increased with CO2 under warm conditions. The contribution of the two dominant higher phytoplankton taxa (diatoms and cryptophytes) and of the 4 most important species (3 diatoms, 1 cryptophyte) did not respond to the experimental treatments. Taxonomic composition of phytoplankton showed only responses at the level of subdominant and rare species. Phytoplankton cell sizes increased with CO2 addition and decreased with warming. Both effects were stronger for larger species. Warming effects were stronger than CO2 effects and tended to counteract each other. Phytoplankton communities without calcifying species and exposed to short-term variation of COO2 seem to be rather resistant to ocean acidification.

Description: Increasing seawater temperature and CO2 concentrations both are expected to increase coastal phytoplankton biomass and carbon to nutrient ratios in nutrient limited seasonally stratified summer conditions. This is because temperature enhances phytoplankton growth while grazing is suggested to be reduced during such bottom-up controlled situations. In addition, enhanced CO2 concentrations potentially favor phytoplankton species, that otherwise depend on costly carbon concentrating mechanisms (CCM). The trophic consequences for consumers under such conditions, however, remain little understood. We set out to experimentally explore the combined effects of increasing temperature and CO2 concentration for phytoplankton biomass and stoichiometry and the consequences for trophic transfer (here for copepods) on a natural nutrient limited Baltic Sea summer plankton community. The results show, that warming effects were translated to the next trophic level by switching the system from a bottom-up controlled to a mainly top-down controlled one. This was reflected in significantly down-grazed phytoplankton and increased zooplankton abundance in the warm temperature treatment (22.5°C). Additionally, at low temperature (16.5°C) rising CO2 concentrations significantly increased phytoplankton biomass. The latter effect however, was due to direct negative impact of CO2 on copepod nauplii which released phytoplankton from grazing in the cold but not in the warm treatments. Our results suggest that future seawater warming has the potential to switch trophic relations between phytoplankton and their grazers under nutrient limited conditions with the consequence of potentially disguising CO2 effects on coastal phytoplankton biomass.