ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
Five decades of seasonal phytoplankton succession examined with principal traits-An approach linking composition to function.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Five decades of seasonal phytoplankton succession examined with principal traits-An approach linking composition to function.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Stage-specific cyanobacterial handoffs and heterotrophic subsidies underpin biocrust carbon accumulation.ISME communications · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Understanding how changes in community composition and function are driven by environmental change remains a fundamental challenge-to which trait-based approaches offer a mechanistic perspective. To examine links between functional and compositional changes we introduce a metric-the "principal trait"-relating the mean traits of a community to principal components (PC) of community composition. We demonstrate the benefits of this approach by analyzing nearly five decades of phytoplankton monitoring data from Lake Constance. Based on principal traits, PC-scores, and PC-rotations we identify the transition of a predation susceptible winter-spring to a defended summer community and distinguish patterns of compositional and functional change during eutrophic and oligotrophic conditions. Remarkably, this approach uncovered the independent emergence of a strong tradeoff between the resource acquisition traits phosphate and light affinity at two temporal scales: once in the response of the predation susceptible winter-spring community to seasonal changes in light and phosphorus availability, and once in the response of the defended summer community to long-term changes in the lake's nutrient status. The analysis identified community members and mechanisms involved in functional changes, demonstrating how the interplay between multiple traits determined the responses of phytoplankton community composition and function to environmental change.
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Registered trials
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