Southern Ocean phytoplankton turnover in response to stepwise Antarctic cooling over the past 15 million years.

ABSTRACT: It is not clear how Southern Ocean phytoplankton communities, which form the base of the marine food web and are a crucial element of the carbon cycle, respond to major environmental disturbance. Here, we use a new model ensemble reconstruction of diatom speciation and extinction rates to examine phytoplankton response to climate change in the southern high latitudes over the past 15 My. We identify five major episodes of species turnover (origination rate plus extinction rate) that were coincident with times of cooling in southern high-latitude climate, Antarctic ice sheet growth across the continental shelves, and associated seasonal sea-ice expansion across the Southern Ocean. We infer that past plankton turnover occurred when a warmer-than-present climate was terminated by a major peri

SUBMITTER: Crampton JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4922175 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature