Coupling physics and biogeochemistry thanks to high-resolution observations of the phytoplankton community structure in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea

Marrec, Pierre; Grégori, Gérald; Doglioli, Andrea M.; Dugenne, Mathilde; Della Penna, Alice; Bhairy, Nagib; Cariou, Thierry; Hélias Nunige, Sandra; Lahbib, Soumaya; Rougier, Gilles; Wagener, Thibaut; Thyssen, Melilotus

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1579-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1579-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1579-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

Research article

|

15 Mar 2018

Research article |

| 15 Mar 2018

Coupling physics and biogeochemistry thanks to high-resolution observations of the phytoplankton community structure in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea

Pierre Marrec, Gérald Grégori, Andrea M. Doglioli, Mathilde Dugenne, Alice Della Penna, Nagib Bhairy, Thierry Cariou, Sandra Hélias Nunige, Soumaya Lahbib, Gilles Rougier, Thibaut Wagener, and Melilotus Thyssen

Download

Final revised paper (published on 15 Mar 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 22 Aug 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Coupling physics and biogeochemistry thanks to high resolution observations of the phytoplankton community structure in the North-Western Mediterranean Sea', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'Response to anonymous Referee #1', Pierre Marrec, 28 Nov 2017
RC2: 'coments on manuscript by Marrec et al', Anonymous Referee #2, 03 Oct 2017
- AC2: 'Response to anonymous Referee #2', Pierre Marrec, 28 Nov 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (14 Dec 2017) by Carol Robinson

AR by Pierre Marrec on behalf of the Authors (18 Dec 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (19 Dec 2017) by Carol Robinson

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Jan 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have made an effort in addressing the comments of the referees and the manuscript has improved. However, a number of questions should still be addressed (see below). The English language needs correction for generally minor mistakes. For example, many nouns used as adjective are in plural form, while they should be in singular form.
Detailed comments
Page 8, line 14. “Along most of the”. Eliminate “part”.
Page 10, line 15. Explain the meaning of the “hat” (^) above the vectors N and w.
Line 23. “that samples”.
Line 29 “population loss rates” instead of “population losses rates”. The same problem in many other places (see comment above): Page 11, line 22. “cell removal process” instead of “cells removal process”, etc. I will not indicate this question again.
Page 11, line 8. “median” or “mean”?
Page 13. Lines 8-9. “presented detectable variability”. Presumably, there was variability, but it could not be detected.
Line 13. Difficult to understand. Please, rewrite.
Line 24. “median” or “mean”?
Line 26. “cytometry analyses”.
Line 27. “The two counting methods did not show” instead of “Both methods counts . .”
Page 14, Lines 4-5. “One picoeukaryote group . . . and another with high FLR”
Line 12. Any relevant taxonomic identification in these pictures?
Page 15, line 9. “However” instead of “although”.
Line 27. Explain the reason for excluding the orange dots.
Page 17, lines 12-14. Sentence not clear, please rewrite.
Line 25. “distribution of cells”.
Line 27. “modeled-produced”?? Should this be “modeled-predicted”?
Line 29. “median” or “mean”?
Page 20. Line 5. “nutrient-rich”.
Line 12. The upper SST limit for type 1 boundary waters given in page 12, line 12 was 17ºC, not 17.5ºC.
Page 22, line 21. “is” instead of “are”.
Lines 27-29. The sentence between “The NanoHighFLO . . and lower than 5 µm”, which refers to a subgroup of the nanoeukaryotes would be better placed after the sentence ending with “Percopo et al., 2011”.
Page 23, line 15. Take into account that there may seasonal variability and explain with more precision the limits of “this oligotrophic area”. For example, in March 2005, at a station located at 41º 45’ N, 5º 7.6’E, Estrada et al. (2014, DSR 1, 94.45-61) found Chla concentrations near 7 µg dm-3 and diatom concentrations > 100 cells cm-3.
Page 24, line 2. What is meant by “severely light adapted”?
Line 10. “although differences of one or two orders of magnitude”?
Lines 27-28. “A few measurements were not included . .” Does this refer to the orange dots? Please, indicate.
Line 29. “type 2 boundary waters”. Add “boundary” to avoid confusion with optical water types. The same in page 25, line 22.
Section 4.3.4. Interesting, but would be better with some streamlining.
Page 27, lines 5-7. This statement appears to contradict that in lines 23-25 of page 21 (“Occurrence of Prochlorococcus population with significantly higher FLR (and/or SWS) values, which might be representative of the LL ecotype, was never observed in surface waters (Fig. 12 for AFCM and S4 for conventional flow cytometry)”). Please, check this.
Figure 1. The labels in the axes are too small.
Figures 6A and 7A. The “red color” is rather orange and the “orange color” is rather yellow, at least in my computer.

Hide

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (11 Jan 2018) by Carol Robinson

AR by Pierre Marrec on behalf of the Authors (24 Jan 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (25 Jan 2018) by Carol Robinson

AR by Pierre Marrec on behalf of the Authors (02 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Download

Article (13120 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

The objective of this study was to better understand the variability of the phytoplankton community structure in small physical structures at the surface of the ocean. After identifying such a structure in the Mediterranean Sea, we deployed cutting-edge physical and biological sensors in order to observe at a high frequency the dynamics of this structure. From these observations we described the variations of the phytoplankton community structure and how the physics controls this variability.