Ocean-Biota System: Integrated Approach to Climate Change Impacts on Plankton Communities in Coastal and Pelagic Environments

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Background

Interactions between physical and biological processes within the Ocean-Biota system are best studied in focused key marine regions both in coastal and pelagic environments. Repeated coincident physical and biological measurements, as well as time series, are crucial to assess, on a small scale and in the long term, the possible effects of the global changes taking place. Tipping points in the climate systems are now a relatively well-understood topic in physical sciences. Marine ecosystem response to climate shifts is still largely unclear and critical points are difficult to predict or even detect. A long-term understanding of ecosystem trends and plankton community shifts (e.g. through Long Term Ecological Research networks) is essential to assess ecosystem response to climate shifts and more generally to climate change. This can be obtained by combining physical information with information derived from classical ecological and taxonomy studies, but also from more recent applications such as molecular biology techniques (e.g. metabarcoding, eDNA), omic science, and functional approaches. Assessing the status of marine ecosystems remains a challenge and combining physical and biological measurements allows merging knowledge and modeling capabilities on oceanographic forcing with that on specific ecological processes. Developing this new knowledge is crucial to enabling environmental management and habitat conservation.

The scope of this research topic includes studies related to integrated approaches that incorporate knowledge on physical-oceanographic and biological processes. Effort is to be put on the study of structural, dimensional and functional biodiversity of plankton communities, on the structure of the trophic network, on the colonization by invasive species, or the role of less studies components (e.g. microzooplankton). This active research theme aims to bridge the gap between information generated by physical oceanographic sciences and information on the functioning of the marine ecosystem ranging from biogeochemistry to genomics, microbiota, and plankton. This requires innovative tools to extract and harmonize the correct information that can be derived from data. The coupling of physical models of the ocean and the food web must become one of the future tools for management based on the ecosystem approach.

In this research topic, our goal is to encourage original research, case studies, and reviews to identify research priority gaps and possibly contribute to filling them in.

We welcome in particular manuscripts developed under the following themes:

(i) Climate impacts on key species: to describe oceanographic and biogeochemical processes affecting the ecology of key species. To study vertical small-scale physical processes (e.g., turbulence within the surface mixed layer and the intermediate layer) where plankton lives and performs vertical migrations; to analyze the presence of key species in bottom past sediments to understand if and how these key species responded to past climate changes.

(ii) Food-webs in polar and temperate regions: to describe plankton communities and their reciprocal links, both in term of abundance, taxonomic composition, and dimensional structure; to understand the oceanographic dynamical context affecting the ecology of key plankton species. Field observations of physical and ecological systems have to be integrated within a phenomenological frame in the context of numerical modeling of the water masses' general circulation and at sub-grid-scale to improve the parameterization of the major physical processes affecting the planktonic food web system.

(iii) Long-term analysis of plankton communities: to provide a joint oceanographic-ecologic picture of presence and space-time distribution of plankton species, with particular attention paid to newly introduced species, interrelations with congeneric residents, coexistence mechanisms, potential niche overlaps and competition mediated by local habitat conditions. Implementation and development of theoretical approaches, mainly aimed at the evaluation of global change implications and their mitigation.

(iv) Biota microbiome: the interactions between plankton and microbiota in key plankton lineages: to characterize the composition and structure of microbes associated with key plankton lineages; to investigate the functions and interactions between plankton and their microbiota affecting plankton communities; to explore plankton microbial community assembly by, investigating coexistence and biogeographic distribution patterns; to better understand the internal control mechanisms of such complex biotic entity and clarify its role and impact in given environmental settings.

Keywords: physical and biological processes, marine ecosystems, climate change, plankton, ecosystem monitoring, ecosystem modelling

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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