http://www.cnr.it/ontology/cnr/individuo/prodotto/ID277757

Turbulence drives microscale patches of motile phytoplankton (Articolo in rivista)

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Turbulence drives microscale patches of motile phytoplankton (Articolo in rivista) (literal)

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William M. Durham (1,2); Eric Climent (3); Michael Barry (1); Filippo De Lillo (4,5); Guido Boffetta (5); Massimo Cencini (6); Roman Stocker (1) (2013)
Turbulence drives microscale patches of motile phytoplankton
in Nature communications
(literal)

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William M. Durham (1,2); Eric Climent (3); Michael Barry (1); Filippo De Lillo (4,5); Guido Boffetta (5); Massimo Cencini (6); Roman Stocker (1) (literal)

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http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130715/ncomms3148/full/ncomms3148.html#/supplementary-information (literal)

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(1) Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA (2) Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK (3) Institut de Mécanique des Fluides, Université de Toulouse, INPT-UPS-CNRS, Allée du Pr. Camille Soula, F-31400 Toulouse, France (4) DICCA, Università di Genova, via Montallegro 1, Genova 16145, Italy (5) Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, Università di Torino, via P. Giuria 1, Torino 10125, Italy (6) Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, via dei Taurini 19, Rome 00185, Italy (literal)

Titolo

Abstract

Patchiness plays a fundamental role in phytoplankton ecology by dictating the rate at which individual cells encounter each other and their predators. The distribution of motile phytoplankton species is often considerably more patchy than that of non-motile species at submetre length scales, yet the mechanism generating this patchiness has remained unknown. Here we show that strong patchiness at small scales occurs when motile phytoplankton are exposed to turbulent flow. We demonstrate experimentally that Heterosigma akashiwo forms striking patches within individual vortices and prove with a mathematical model that this patchiness results from the coupling between motility and shear. When implemented within a direct numerical simulation of turbulence, the model reveals that cell motility can prevail over turbulent dispersion to create strong fractal patchiness, where local phytoplankton concentrations are increased more than 10-fold. This 'unmixing' mechanism likely enhances ecological interactions in the plankton and offers mechanistic insights into how turbulence intensity impacts ecosystem productivity. (literal)

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