Abstract. Jellyfish are increasingly recognised as important components of the marine ecosystem, yet their specific role is poorly defined compared to that other zooplankton groups. This paper presents first global ocean biogeochemical model includes an explicit representation jellyfish and uses gain insight into influence on plankton community. The Plankton Type Ocean Model (PlankTOM11) groups...

The journal Eukaryotic Cell has served the eukaryotic microbiology community since 2002. It will continue to do so as it merges into the new broad-scope open-access journal mSphere in 2016.

In plankton ecology, biological and physical dynamics are coupled, structuring how plankton interact with their environment and other organisms. This interdisciplinary field has progressed considerably over the recent past, due in large part to advances in technology that have improved our ability to observe plankton and their fluid environment simultaneously across multiple scales. Recent rese...

The effect of ocean acidification on the fatty acid composition of a natural plankton community in the Arctic was studied in a large-scale mesocosm experiment, carried out in Kongsfjorden (Svalbard, Norway) at 79°N. Nine mesocosms of ∼50 m3 each were exposed to 8 different pCO2 levels (from natural background conditions to ∼1420 μatm), yielding pH values (on the total scale) from ∼8.3 to 7.5. I...

A problem perplexing many ecologists studying natural communities has been how the species of a community coexist without competitive exclusion occurring. Hutchinson named this the 'Paradox of the Plankton', though the question has been asked especially for tropical rain forest and coral reef communities. Twelve mechanisms have been proposed to explain the paradox: 1. Niche Diversification, 7. ...