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Data from: Rehabilitating the cyanobacteria – niche partitioning, resource use efficiency, and phytoplankton community structure during diazotrophic cyanobacterial blooms
Citation
Olli, Kalle; Klais, Riina; Tamminen, Timo (2016), Data from: Rehabilitating the cyanobacteria – niche partitioning, resource use efficiency, and phytoplankton community structure during diazotrophic cyanobacterial blooms, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d0826
Contact: Olli, Kalle ; Tamminen, Timo ; Klais, Riina

Access data
Archived data
Availability: CC0 To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this dataset has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this dataset.

Description
1. Blooms of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria are recurrent phenomena in marine and freshwater habitats, and their supplying role in aquatic biogeochemical cycles is generally considered vital. The objective of this study is to analyze if an increasing proportion of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria affects (i) the composition of the non-diazotrophic component of ambient phytoplankton communities, and (ii) resource use efficiency (RUE; ratio of chl a to total nutrients) – an important ecosystem function. more

We hypothesize that diazotrophs increase community P use, and decrease N use efficiencies, as new N is brought into the system, relaxing N, and concomitantly aggravating P limitation. We test this by analyzing an extensive dataset from the Baltic Sea (> 3700 quantitative phytoplankton samples), known to harbor conspicuous and recurrent blooms of Nodularia spumigena and Aphanizomenon sp. 2. System-level phosphorus use efficiency (RUEP) was positively related with high proportion of diazotrophic cyanobacteria, suggesting aggravation of phosphorus limitation. However, concomitant decrease of nitrogen use efficiency (RUEN) was not observed. Nodularia spumigena, a dominant diazotroph and a notorious toxin producer, had a significantly stronger relationship with RUEP, compared to the competing non-toxic Aphanizomenon sp., confirming niche differentiation in P acquisition strategies between the major bloom-forming cyanobacterial species in the Baltic Sea. Nodularia occurrences were associated with stronger temperature stratification in more offshore environments, indicating higher reliance on in situ P regeneration. 3. By using constrained and unconstrained ordination, permutational multivariate analysis of variance, and local similarity analysis, we show that diazotrophic cyanobacteria explained no more than a few percent of the ambient phytoplankton community variation. The analyses furthermore yielded rather evenly distributed negative and positive effects on individual co-occurring phytoplankton taxa, with no obvious phylogenetic or functional trait-based patterns. 4. Synthesis. Our study reveals that despite the widely acknowledged noxious impacts of cyanobacterial blooms, the overall effect on phytoplankton community structure is minor. There are no predominantly positive or negative associations with ambient phytoplankton species. Species-specific niche differences in cyanobacterial resource acquisition affect important ecosystem functions, like biomass production per unit limiting resource.

Scope
Themes:
Biology > Plankton > Phytoplankton
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal, Brackish water, Aphanizomenon, Limiting nutrients, Nitrogen fixation, Nodularia, ANE, Baltic, EurOBIS calculated BBOX, Bacillariophyceae, Cryptophyceae, Cyanophyceae, Dinophyceae

Geographical coverage
ANE, Baltic [Marine Regions]
EurOBIS calculated BBOX Stations
Bounding Box
Coordinates: MinLong: 12,387; MinLat: 53,671 - MaxLong: 29,73; MaxLat: 60,57 [WGS84]

Temporal coverage
1966 - 2008

Taxonomic coverage
Bacillariophyceae [WoRMS]
Cryptophyceae [WoRMS]
Cyanophyceae [WoRMS]
Dinophyceae [WoRMS]

Parameters
Salinity of the water body [BODC]
Temperature of the water body [BODC]
Wet weight biomass of biological entity specified elsewhere per unit volume of the water body [BODC]

Contributors
University of Tartu (UTEE)data creator
Olli, Kalle
Klais, Riina
Finnish Environment Institute (FEI/SYKE)data creator
Tamminen, Timo

Related datasets
Published in:
EurOBIS: European Ocean Biodiversity Information System, more

Dataset status: Completed
Data type: Data
Data origin: Research: field survey
Metadatarecord created: 2022-07-19
Information last updated: 2022-07-19
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