ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Dynamic sinking behaviour in marine phytoplankton: rapid changes in buoyancy may aid in nutrient uptake.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- A Review of Phytoplankton Sinking Rates: Mechanisms, Methodologies, and Biogeochemical Implications.Biology · 2026Review
- High throughputISME communications · 2026Article
- Diverse biophysical and molecular mechanisms drive phytoplankton sinking in response to starvation.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Costs and benefits of phytoplankton motility.ArXiv · 2025Article
- Biophysical and molecular mechanisms responsible for phytoplankton sinking in response to starvation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cell size, density, and nutrient dependency of unicellular algal gravitational sinking velocities.Science advances · 2024Article
- Channels of Evolution: Unveiling Evolutionary Patterns in Diatom CaPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Does the settling column method underestimate phytoplankton sinking speeds?Royal Society open science · 2024Review
- Impact of critical eddy diffusivity on seasonal bloom dynamics of Phytoplankton in a global set of aquatic environments.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Integrative effects of morphology, silicification, and light on diatom vertical movements.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Diffusional Interactions among Marine Phytoplankton and Bacterioplankton: Modelling HMicroorganisms · 2022Article
- Regulation of sedimentation rate shapes the evolution of multicellularity in a close unicellular relative of animals.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Pelagic diatoms communicate through synchronized beacon natural fluorescence signaling.Science advances · 2021Article
- Phytoplankton Morpho-Functional Trait Variability along Coastal Environmental Gradients.Microorganisms · 2021Article
- Teamwork in the viscous oceanic microscale.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Origins of eukaryotic excitability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Bistability in oxidative stress response determines the migration behavior of phytoplankton in turbulence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Restoration, conservation and phytoplankton hysteresis.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- On the fate of sinking diatoms: the transport of active buoyancy-regulating cells in the ocean.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Phytoplankton sinking is an important property that can determine community composition in the photic zone and material loss to the deep ocean. To date, studies of diatom suspension have relied on bulk measurements with assumptions that bulk rates adequately capture the essential characteristics of diatom sinking. However, recent work has illustrated that individual diatom sinking rates vary considerably from the mean bulk rate. In this study, we apply high-resolution optical techniques, individual-based observations of diatom sinking and a recently developed method of flow visualization around freely sinking cells. The results show that in both field samples and laboratory cultures, some large species of centric diatoms are capable of a novel behaviour, whereby cells undergo bursts of rapid sinking that alternate with near-zero sinking rates on the timescales of seconds. We also demonstrate that this behaviour is under direct metabolic control of the cell. We discuss these results in the context of implications for nutrient flux to the cell surface. While nutrient flux in large diatoms increases during fast sinking, current mass transport models cannot incorporate the unsteady sinking behaviour observed in this study. However, large diatoms appear capable of benefiting from the enhanced nutrient flux to their surface during rapid sinking even during brief intervening periods of near-zero sinking rates.
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