MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 488:1-9 (2013) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps10443 FEATURE ARTICLE Species richness in marine phytoplankton communities is not correlated to ecosystem productivity Pedro Cermeño1,*, Tamara Rodríguez-Ramos2, Maria Dornelas3, Francisco G. Figueiras4, Emilio Marañón2, Isabel G. Teixeira2, Sergio M. Vallina1 1Instituto de Ciencias del Mar (CSIC), Passeig Maritim de la Barceloneta 37-49, 08003 Barcelona, Spain 2Departamento de Ecología y Biología Animal, Universidad de Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain 3Centre for Biological Diversity, Scottish Oceans Institute, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK 4Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas (CSIC), 36208 Vigo, Spain *Email: pedrocermeno@icm.csic.es ABSTRACT: Microorganisms attain high population densities, which has led microplankton ecologists to assume that samples of a few tens of millilitres suffice to characterize the assemblage of species. However, the observation that microbial plankton communities contain a large pool of species with low population densities casts doubt on the validity of estimates based on conventional sampling methods. By standardizing estimates of species numbers, we show that marine phytoplankton communities have been undersampled more severely in ecosystems of low productivity, thus leading to bias in the patterns of diversity reported previously. We found that phytoplankton communities from unproductive, subtropical waters fit to right-skewed, lognormal species-abundance distributions, which has long been interpreted to arise from incomplete censuses. The sampling-standardized estimates of species richness show no relationship with ecosystem productivity, arguing against the idea that phytoplankton diversity peaks at intermediate levels of primary production. These results suggest that these 2 fundamental properties of marine phytoplankton communities, viz. diversity and productivity, might not be linked mechanistically. KEY WORDS: Diversity–productivity relationship · Rarefaction · Species abundance distribution · Undersampling Full text in pdf format Information about this Feature Article NextCite this article as: Cermeño P, Rodríguez-Ramos T, Dornelas M, Figueiras FG, Marañón E, Teixeira IG, Vallina S (2013) Species richness in marine phytoplankton communities is not correlated to ecosystem productivity. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 488:1-9. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps10443 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 488. Online publication date: August 15, 2013 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2013 Inter-Research.