Publication Date:
2013-04-20
Description:
The circum-Antarctic Southern Ocean is an important region for global marine food webs and carbon cycling because of sea-ice formation and its unique plankton ecosystem. However, the mechanisms underlying the installation of this distinct ecosystem and the geological timing of its development remain unknown. Here, we show, on the basis of fossil marine dinoflagellate cyst records, that a major restructuring of the Southern Ocean plankton ecosystem occurred abruptly and concomitant with the first major Antarctic glaciation in the earliest Oligocene (~33.6 million years ago). This turnover marks a regime shift in zooplankton-phytoplankton interactions and community structure, which indicates the appearance of eutrophic and seasonally productive environments on the Antarctic margin. We conclude that earliest Oligocene cooling, ice-sheet expansion, and subsequent sea-ice formation were important drivers of biotic evolution in the Southern Ocean.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Houben, Alexander J P -- Bijl, Peter K -- Pross, Jorg -- Bohaty, Steven M -- Passchier, Sandra -- Stickley, Catherine E -- Rohl, Ursula -- Sugisaki, Saiko -- Tauxe, Lisa -- van de Flierdt, Tina -- Olney, Matthew -- Sangiorgi, Francesca -- Sluijs, Appy -- Escutia, Carlota -- Brinkhuis, Henk -- Expedition 318 Scientists -- Dotti, Carlota Escutia -- Klaus, Adam -- Fehr, Annick -- Williams, Trevor -- Bendle, James A P -- Carr, Stephanie A -- Dunbar, Robert B -- Flores, Jose-Abel -- Gonzalez, Jhon J -- Hayden, Travis G -- Iwai, Masao -- Jimenez-Espejo, Francisco J -- Katsuki, Kota -- Kong, Gee Soo -- McKay, Robert M -- Nakai, Mutsumi -- Pekar, Stephen F -- Riesselman, Christina -- Sakai, Toyosaburo -- Salzmann, Ulrich -- Shrivastava, Prakash K -- Tuo, Shouting -- Welsh, Kevin -- Yamane, Masako -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 Apr 19;340(6130):341-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1223646.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Earth Sciences, Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 4, 3584 CD Utrecht, Netherlands. Alexander.Houben@TNO.nl〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23599491" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Adaptation, Physiological
;
Animals
;
Antarctic Regions
;
Cold Temperature
;
Dinoflagellida/*physiology
;
*Ecosystem
;
Fossils
;
*Ice Cover
;
*Oceans and Seas
;
Phytoplankton/*physiology
;
Zooplankton/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
