The tropical oceans harbor the most varied plankton communities on our planet, which serve as the foundation of marine food webs. However, it may come as a surprise that the modern diversity of plankton in the tropics has only emerged recently, within the past 8 million years, due to global cooling.
The University of Texas at AustinThe discovery has sparked concerns about the potential impact of rapid ocean warming on plankton distribution, as they may be compelled to migrate away from the tropics, resulting in adverse consequences for marine ecosystems. This could have detrimental effects on key fishlike tuna and billfish, as well as on coastal communities that rely on them.
To conduct the study, researchers analyzed a database of 500,000 microfossils — the largest of its kind — gathered during 55 years of scientific ocean drilling. Each fossilized shell tells where and when the plankton lived, how deep its habitat was, and the conditions of the ocean around it. “The important thing now is to determine how the effect of climate change on those species will cascade across food webs,” said Harvard University network scientist Anshuman Swain, who co-led the research.
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