Modelling the effect of temperature on phytoplankton growth across the global ocean

Ghjuvan Micaelu Grimaud (1) , Valérie Le Guennec (2, 1) , Sakina-Dorothée Ayata (2) , Francis Mairet (1) , Antoine Sciandra (1, 2, 3) , Olivier Bernard (2, 1)

1 BIOCORE - Biological control of artificial ecosystems
2 LOV - Laboratoire d'océanographie de Villefranche
3 UPMC - Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6

Phytoplankton are ectotherms and are thus directly influenced by temperature. They experience temporal variation in temperature which results in a selection pressure. Using the Adaptive Dynamics theory and an optimization method, we study phytoplankton thermal adaptation (more particulary the evolution of the optimal growth temperature) to temperature fluctuations. We use this method at the scale of global ocean and compare two existing models. We validate our approach by comparing model predictions with experimental data sets from 57 species. Finally, we show that temperature actually drives evolution and that the optimum temperature for phytoplankton growth is strongly linked to thermal amplitude variations.

Keywords: phytoplankton; temperature; evolution; Adaptive Dynamics; microalgae; modelling

Domains: Automatic Control Engineering; Mathematics [math]; Engineering Sciences [physics]; Life Sciences [q-bio]

Ghjuvan Micaelu Grimaud, Valérie Le Guennec, Sakina-Dorothée Ayata, Francis Mairet, Antoine Sciandra, et al.. Modelling the effect of temperature on phytoplankton growth across the global ocean. 8th Vienna International Conference on Mathematical Modelling — MATHMOD 2015, 2015, Vienna, Austria. ⟨10.1016/j.ifacol.2015.05.059⟩. ⟨hal-01245890⟩