Changes in water color shift competition between phytoplankton species with contrasting light-harvesting strategies.

ABSTRACT: The color of many lakes and seas is changing, which is likely to affect the species composition of freshwater and marine phytoplankton communities. For example, cyanobacteria with phycobilisomes as light-harvesting antennae can effectively utilize green or orange-red light. However, recent studies show that they use blue light much less efficiently than phytoplankton species with chlorophyll-based light-harvesting complexes, even though both phytoplankton groups may absorb blue light to a similar extent. Can we advance ecological theory to predict how these differences in light-harvesting strategy affect competition between phytoplankton species? Here, we develop a new resource competition model in which the absorption and utilization efficiency of different colors of light are varied inde

SUBMITTER: Luimstra VM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7079016 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature