Project: Can the availability of B-vitamins control phyto-and-bacterioplankton successions in a coastal upwelling region?

Description from NSF award abstract:
B-vitamins (thiamin (B1), biotin (B7), and cobalamin (B12)) are organic molecules used by all organisms for many biochemical reactions ranging from DNA and amino acid synthesis to carbon dioxide assimilation. Despite their metabolic importance, many marine organisms cannot make them and need to obtain them from the environment. Because the requirement for a specific vitamin is different for different organisms, changes in the species composition of algae could be explained by their different B-vitamin requirements. For example, changes in the biological properties of waters during an algal bloom (removal of needed vitamins and release of other vitamins) may favor algae that require the vitamin released by the previous bloom (setting up a floral succession). This selective preconditioning of the waters may be one factor in the seasonal succession of algal species. However, evaluating the role of vitamins in marine ecology has been difficult. No study to date has been comprehensive enough to estimate the importance of vitamins in primary productivity and species succession. This is especially true in coastal upwelling regions that although relatively small in area, are orders of magnitude more productive than their open-ocean counterparts. In fact, those regions contribute a significant portion of the world fisheries. Therefore, in order to try to predict future changes in the world ocean due to human activity, the variables that influence or control the algal communities that dominate the very productive food chains of upwelling regions need to be identified.

This study will investigate how the availability of B-vitamins affects the dynamics of algal- and bacterioplankton population growth in coastal waters of an upwelling region off Southern California. This comprehensive field investigation will determine in situ temporal concentrations of several dissolved and particulate B-vitamins, inorganic micro- and macronutrients, concurrently with seasonal changes in phytoplankton and bacterial abundances and species composition at a long-term time series station within the San Pedro Basin near Los Angeles. Those measurements will be complemented with field incubation experiments with natural plankton assemblages to study the effect of organic and inorganic nutrient amendments on phytoplankton and bacterial community structure. This study will establish for the first time that the availability of ambient B-vitamins influence algal and bacterial species succession in a highly productive coastal upwelling region and that multiple and differing B-vitamin requirements limit growth of some phytoplankton species in those areas. Furthermore, this study will try to show that coastal upwelling transports some B-vitamins to the phytoplankton community in the photic zone from bacterially-influenced source waters within the upper mesopelagic zone.