Articles | Volume 22, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-791-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-791-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| Highlight paper
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12 Feb 2025
Research article | Highlight paper |
| 12 Feb 2025
| 12 Feb 2025
What controls planktic foraminiferal calcification?
Ruby Barrett
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Joost de Vries
BRIDGE, School of Geography, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Daniela N. Schmidt
School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
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Planktic foraminifera are microscopic marine organisms whose calcium carbonate shells provide valuable insights into past ocean conditions. A promising means of understanding foraminiferal ecology and their environmental interactions is to constrain their key functional traits relating to feeding, symbioses, motility, calcification, and reproduction. Here we review what we know of their functional traits, key gaps in our understanding, and suggestions on how to fill them.
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Calcifying phytoplankton ('coccolithophores') are a diverse group of organisms which play a key role in the ocean's carbon cycle. Despite the diversity of these organisms, they are generally viewed as a single group with a uniform response to climate change. Here we show using global machine learning stock estimates that doing so risks biasing our understanding of the role of these organisms in the carbon cycle and their response to environmental changes.
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Planktic foraminifera are microscopic marine organisms whose calcium carbonate shells provide valuable insights into past ocean conditions. A promising means of understanding foraminiferal ecology and their environmental interactions is to constrain their key functional traits relating to feeding, symbioses, motility, calcification, and reproduction. Here we review what we know of their functional traits, key gaps in our understanding, and suggestions on how to fill them.
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Calcifying phytoplankton (coccolithophores) utilize a life cycle in which they can grow and divide into two different phases. These two phases (HET and HOL) vary in terms of their physiology and distributions, with many unknowns about what the key differences are. Using a combination of lab experiments and model simulations, we find that nutrient storage is a critical difference between the two phases and that this difference allows them to inhabit different nitrogen input regimes.
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We conducted a meta-analysis of known experimental literature examining how marine bivalve growth rates respond to climate change. Growth is usually negatively impacted by climate change. Bivalve eggs/larva are generally more vulnerable than either juveniles or adults. Available data on the bivalve response to climate stressors are biased towards early growth stages (commercially important in the Global North), and many families have only single experiments examining climate change impacts.
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Planktic foraminifera are marine-calcifying zooplankton; their shells are widely used to measure past temperature and productivity. We developed ForamEcoGEnIE 2.0 to simulate the four subgroups of this organism. We found that the relative abundance distribution agrees with marine sediment core-top data and that carbon export and biomass are close to sediment trap and plankton net observations respectively. This model provides the opportunity to study foraminiferal ecology in any geological era.
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Editorial statement
This study reveals that size-normalized weight (SNW) in planktonic foraminifera varies by species and environment, making it unsuitable as a universal pCO2 proxy. Regional calibration and species-specific approaches are essential for reliable paleoceanographic reconstructions.
This study reveals that size-normalized weight (SNW) in planktonic foraminifera varies by...
Short summary
Planktic foraminifers are a plankton whose fossilised shell weight is used to reconstruct past environmental conditions such as seawater CO2. However, there is debate about whether other environmental drivers impact shell weight. Here we use a global data compilation and statistics to analyse what controls their weight. We find that the response varies between species and ocean basin, making it important to use regional calibrations and consider which species should be used to reconstruct CO2.
Planktic foraminifers are a plankton whose fossilised shell weight is used to reconstruct past...
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