Salp Fecal Pellets Release More Bioavailable Iron to Southern Ocean Phytoplankton than Krill Fecal Pellets

Abstract

Over the last decades, the habitat of the Southern Ocean (SO) key species Antarctic Krill (Euphausia superba) has contracted to high latitudes due to reduced winter sea ice coverage, while salps as Salpa thompsoni, have extended their dispersal to the former krill habitats. To date, the potential implications of this population shift on the biogeochemical cycling of the limiting micronutrient iron and its bioavailability to SO phytoplankton has never been tested. In this study, we determined how efficiently krill and salps recycle iron and how bioavailable this iron is to SO phytoplankton. To test this, we collected fecal pellets (FP) of natural populations of salps and krill, added them to the same SO phytoplankton community and measured their iron uptake rates. Our result reveal that both FP additions yielded similar dissolved iron concentrations in the seawater. Per FP carbon added to the seawater, 4.8 ± 1.5 times more Fe was taken up by the same phytoplankton community from salp FP than from krill FP, suggesting that salp FP increased the iron bioavailability, possibly through the release of ligands. With respect to the ongoing shift from krill to salps, the potential for carbon fixation of the iron limited SO could be strengthened in the future, representing a negative feedback to climate change.