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Abstract
In marine environment phytoplankton and picoplankton are responsible for a bulk of production and nutrient cycling and may give important information about the different seawater habitats. In the present paper, the temporal changes of phytoplankton as well as autotrophic and heterotrophic picoplankton abundance and biomass in two coastal areas in the Gulf of Taranto (Mediterranean Sea) subjected to different levels of anthropogenic pressure were studied and related to the main environmental variables. The two analysed areas were significantly different as regards the abiotic conditions which also varied temporally. Univariate analyses revealed that larger phytoplankton and heterotrophic picoplankton abundance and biomass varied as well. The multivariate analyses showed a complex distribution of the whole planktonic assemblages, which varied in time and space without a decipherable pattern, presumably due to the peculiar spatial-temporal dynamics of the sole autotrophic picoplankton abundance. Significant correlations between planktonic assemblages and environmental variables were discussed by taking into account also the potential role of the considered planktonic components as useful environmental monitoring parameters.
Highlights
More than 70% of the world’s human population lives in the coastal environments where are the boundaries between a positive and negative effect in terms of biomass production and fuelling the whole trophic web [1]
Small autotrophs constitute a significant fraction of the total primary production in many systems where they are superimposed on the classical pathway based on the larger phytoplankton and are responsible for the bulk of productivity and nutrient cycling
Univariate analyses: Spatial-temporal differences in the univariate patterns of temperature, salinity, nutrient concentration, N:P ratio, phytoplankton, autotrophic and heterotrophic picoplankton abundancesn were analysed using 2-way ANOVA performed by PERMANOVA [31] based on Euclidean distance measure [32], in order to avoid any assumption about the distribution of the variables [31,33]
Summary
More than 70% of the world’s human population lives in the coastal environments where are the boundaries between a positive and negative effect in terms of biomass production and fuelling the whole trophic web [1]. New protocols and set of tools to help guide the ecosystem management are developing These consider the effects of environmental changes on living organisms and, on the whole pelagic component including picoplankton [9]. Bacteria respond quickly to biotic and abiotic changes in their environment and data on the bacterial community may give important information about the different seawater habitats since the bacterial metabolic activity influences the water quality [13,14] In this framework our aim was to evaluate the spatial and temporal dynamics of the phytoplankton and picoplankton communities in two coastal areas of the Taranto Gulf (Northern Ionian Sea, Mediterranean Sea) subjected to different levels of anthropogenic impact. J Geogr Nat Disast 4: 121. doi:10.4172/2167-0587.1000121
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