Abstract
Marine microalgae cells are key environmental players as they transform inorganic nutrients dissolved in oceans into biomass. Most prominent among these inorganic compounds is bicarbonate, which originates in considerable quantities from atmospheric CO2, a potent greenhouse gas. Because microalgae cells act as a sink of anthropogenic CO2, understanding phytoplankton's carbon sequestration is a crucial link between environmental chemistry and ecology.The impact of ambient chemical and physical parameters onto phytoplankton and their chemical composition have been investigated in some detail. However, species↔species interactions, namely their nutrient competition, require in‐depth investigations of the impact of competing species on the dynamics of biomass production as well as the amount of biomass produced. Experimental studies presented here have been based on two marine microalgae species, that is, Nannochloropsis oculata and Dunaliella parva. For investigating dynamic aspects of biomass production, the species growth rates have been measured, under otherwise identical conditions, in single‐species cultures as well as in competition situations. Depending on the species and nutrient type the cells compete for, growth rates in species mixtures were found to change from 50% to 200% of the corresponding single‐species cultures. Competition impacts regarding the maximum cell concentration in a culture were even more drastic as the cell production was reduced, in some cases, down to 11% of the corresponding single‐cell culture's growth rate. Furthermore, a slight but significant shift in cell size distributions toward smaller cell sizes was found in competition situations. This study demonstrates that biomass production is also driven by the cells' biological environment. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published Version
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