Abstract
To assess the anthropogenic effect on biodiversity, it is essential to understand the global diversity distribution of the major groups at the base of the food chain, ideally before global warming initiation (1850 Common Era CE). Since organisms in the plankton are highly interconnected and carbonate synthesizing species have a good preservation state in the Atlantic Ocean, the diversity distribution pattern of planktonic foraminifera from 1741 core-top surface sediment samples (expanded ForCenS database) provides a case study to comprehend centennial to decadal time-averaged diversity patterns at pre-1970 CE times, the tempo of the substantial increase in tropospheric warming. In this work, it is hypothesized and tested for the first time, that the large-scale diversity patterns of foraminifera communities are determined by sea surface temperature (SST, representing energy), Chl-a (a surrogate for photosynthetic biomass), and ocean kinetic energy (as EKE). Alpha diversity was estimated using species richness (S), Shannon Wiener index (H), and Simpson evenness (E), and mapped using geostatistical approaches. The three indices are significantly related to SST, Chl-a, and EKE (71-88% of the deviance in the generalized additive mixed model, including a spatial component). Beta diversity was studied through species turnover using gradient forest analysis (59% of the variation). The primary community thresholds of foraminifera species turnover were associated with 5-10 °C and 22-28 °C SST, 0.05-0.15 mg m-3 Chl-a, and 1.2-2.0 cm2 s-2 log10 EKE energy, respectively. Six of the most important foraminifera species identified for the environmental thresholds of beta diversity are also fundamental in transfer functions, further reinforcing the approaches used. The geographic location of the transition between the four main biogeographic zones was redefined based on the results of beta diversity analysis and incorporating the new datasets, identifying the major marine latitudinal gradients, the most important upwelling areas (Benguela Current, Canary Current), the Equatorial divergence, and the subtropical fronts (Gulf Stream-North Atlantic Drift path in the north, and the South Atlantic current in the south). In conclusion, we provide statistical proof that energy (SST), food supply (Chl-a), and currents (EKE) are the main environmental drivers shaping planktonic foraminifera diversity in the Atlantic ocean and define the associated thresholds for species change on those variables.
Introduction
Climate warming and other multiple ongoing human-induced threats to the Earth system are a challenge to marine ecosystems and their biodiversity. However, geographic variability of simple community parameters of a planktonic group has been found to be stable enough in time and space, to reflect the spatial characteristics that approach biogeographical distributions (). Previous studies, focused on free floating unicellular plankton organisms, including foraminifera, have been used to understand the drivers behind species diversity distribution (Rutherford et al., 1999; ; Martiny et al., 2006; ; Rodríguez-Ramos et al., 2015; ; Rillo et al., 2022).
Many planktonic species are cosmopolitan, that is, can be found everywhere across the global ocean () as they are transported over long distances by ocean currents (e.g. van Sebille et al., 2015). Planktonic foraminifera are free-floating protozoa that produce calcium carbonate shells. These organisms dwell throughout the ocean in diverse oceanic regimes from tropical to polar water masses in abundances determined by physico-chemical properties, most notably temperature, but also nutrient and oxygen availability, water column stratification, salinity, turbidity, and carbonate saturation of seawater (e.g., ; ; Schiebel et al., 2018; and references within). However, plankton foraminifera are known to also follow food availability and quality, with both omnivorous and herbivorous species feeding on phytoplankton (; Schiebel and Hemleben, 2005). Most studies involving water column or sediment samples, such as those used in the current work, one needs to rely on the morphospecies of the forty-seven extant species, which are known to display characteristic environmental preferences (Schiebel and Hemleben, 2017), although the increasing body of genetic analyses of planktonic foraminifera material is revealing a significant number of additional genotypes and cryptospecies (e.g., ; ; Schiebel et al., 2018). Furthermore, their continuous deposition and good preservation on the ocean floor sediments, in particular in the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere above the Calcite Compensation Depth (CCD – level at which all CaCO3 dissolves – ()), make foraminifera an important group in paleoceanographic studies, and a proxy for past climate change.
More than 50 years ago, Stehli et al. (1969) suggested that the diversity of planktonic organisms could be used to reconstruct past ecological conditions. In 1992, Ottens and Nederbragt applied planktonic foraminifera diversity to past records, compared it to modern data distribution along a few latitudinal transects, and concluded that regional environmental conditions determine specific and localized responses that depart from the global latitudinal trend. An idea that is supported by many other plankton studies that describe a bimodal latitudinal diversity pattern, with highest values at temperate latitudes (e.g., Ruddiman, 1969; ; Powell et al., 2012; ). The origin of this tropical diversity plateau was also investigated by Yasuhara et al. (2020), who attributed it to strong environmental control particularly during the last glacial-interglacial (warming) transition leading to a projection of a further decrease in tropical diversity by the end of this century.
Previous works studying the ForCenS database were all unanimous that temperature is the main driver of foraminifera community changes and respective biodiversity (e.g. Morey et al., 2005; ; Rillo et al., 2022). However, differences arise in terms of the other drivers that were found to be important, mostly according to the environmental datasets used. Morey et al. (2005) concluded that the secondary drivers of foraminifera community were related to ocean fertility, although not directly (using canonical analysis to evaluate the effect of several environmental variables). concluded that planktonic foraminifera diversity patterns are explained by multiple processes acting in concert. Rillo et al. (2022) observed a constant species turnover rate across the SST gradient up to 25 °C, and concluded that in warmer waters SST is less predictive of species composition turnover (using Bayesian bootstrap generalized dissimilarity models). In the current work we raise and test the hypothesis apriori, that the additional drivers are related to ocean circulation and oceanographic fronts, which have not been included in any of the previous works and with food supply (CHL), three energy related variables, basic to life and physiology. Only Richter et al. (2022), to the authors best knowledge, considered the impact of large scale ocean circulation shaping these communities. These authors used DNA to characterize global plankton diversity (viruses, prokaryotes, protists, and, animals) and conclude that plankton biogeography at the global scale is linked to transport and large-scale ocean currents.
Oceanographic fronts are regions of large horizontal gradients of water properties such as temperature, salinity, and density. They play a paramount role in ecological processes, enhancing biological production, and increasing diversity due to the convergence of species inhabiting different water masses (; Munk et al., 2003; ; ). The combination of large-scale circulation and high diversity, therefore, can be explained by the confluence of different water masses, which carry morphotypes from lower latitudes, and promote the encounter of distance-sourced plankton populations (Villa Martín et al., 2020; ). Furthermore, mesoscale dynamics associated to hemispheric and regional currents and fronts, such as eddies, have a strong impact not only on the local primary production fed by the mesoscale eddies’ vertical supply of nutrients but also on the plankton community structure and diversity (e.g., the Gulf Stream cold/warm core rings) (; ; McGillicuddy, 2016; ). Additionally, mesoscale vortices enhance the creation of an environmental variability that enlarges the number of physical niches available for passively floating plankton and consequently facilitating the coexistence of different species (Rutherford et al., 1999). Eddy resolving numerical models with a spatial resolution ≤ 0.1° (Uchida et al., 2017), have shown that most of the Eddy Kinetic Energy (EKE) is due to meso- and sub-mesoscale baroclinic instability (Qiu et al., 2014). The resulting confluence of plankton from different realms into these boundaries is demonstrated by reports of completely different assemblages of plankton foraminifera on either side of the boundaries of major current systems, such as the Gulf Stream (; ; The Ring Group, 1981) or the Azores Current (Schiebel et al., 2002).
The aim of this work, is, therefore, to test the hypothesis that three energy related drivers explain planktonic foraminifera diversity patterns in the Atlantic Ocean: temperature (SST), photosynthetic biomass and food supply, represented by chlorophyll-a concentration (Chl-a), and the main currents/fronts, quantified by eddy kinetic energy (EKE). We examined the relationship of these three variables with alpha diversity indices, and its effect on beta diversity was addressed through Gradient Forest Analysis (GF). Additionally, species changes along environmental thresholds was studied in detail and biogeographic zones transitions, redefined.
Material and methods
Material and related background information
We combined the ForCenS planktonic foraminifera assemblages sampled in Atlantic Ocean core-top surface sediment samples (Siccha and Kučera, 2017) with 54 additional samples for the NE Atlantic coastal upwelling systems (Salgueiro et al., 2008; Voelker and Salgueiro, 2017; Salgueiro et al., 2020, represented in the figure as Salgueiro) and 40 samples from the North Atlantic’s subpolar gyre (; Sahoo et al., 2022). This resulted in a total of 1741 samples (Figure 1), which were collected between the 1960’s and 2016. (For metadata standardization see Supplementary Material).
Figure 1
Alpha diversity Indices
Biological diversity comprises two main aspects: species richness and evenness or equitability (). In ecological studies, both the total number of species (species richness, S), the Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H) and evenness index (E) are commonly used to estimate community diversity. Species richness can be defined as the total number of species encountered in a sample (S). Although species richness may depend on sample size, in this case, the use of census counts (in % of total counts) refutes that possibility as it departs from an equal sample size. Evenness describes the distribution of individuals among the species, i.e. it is “Even” if all species (yet if few) are equally abundant (“even”/more diverse), or “uneven” if the community is dominated by one or a few species only (less diverse). To measure community evenness, the Probability of Interspecific Encounter (E) (), also known as Simpson’s evenness index and Gini-Simpson index, was used. The E index is unbiased relatively to sample size, and it represents the probability that two randomly chosen individuals from an assemblage will represent two different species. According to , this index produces easily interpretable units of probability and corresponds intuitively to a diversity measure that is based on the encounter of a novel species, and it varies between 0 and 1 (with 1 representing a community with all species equally abundant (perfectly even, and therefore no species is dominant over another) and 0 representing a highly uneven one, i.e. dominated by one single species). The alpha diversity indices were calculated using the Vegan package (Oksanen et al., 2020) in the R free software (http://www.r-project.org/) and predicted over the sampled area into a regular grid by applying the spatial model estimated variogram, using kriging interpolation, for each index separately (; ). Kriging has been proven to be amongst the best interpolation methods to represent marine species distributions, when only geographical variables are considered (Rufino et al., 2021).
Oceanographic variables
In the current work, we compare foraminifera assemblages and the calculated diversity with SST, Chl-a concentration (as a surrogate for photosynthetic biomass) and EKE, all variables that can be approximated by satellite synoptic measurements at a large scale (Figure 2).
Figure 2
Annual averaged SST was extracted from the World Ocean Atlas 2013 (WOA13: ), which is a set of objectively analyzed (0.25° grid) climatological fields. The used variables correspond to the average of five “decadal” climatologies: 1955-1964, 1965-1974, 1975-1984, 1985-1994, and 1995-2006. Although salinity and nutrients in WOA13 (such as phosphate, nitrate, silicate) were initially considered in a preliminary analysis, we ended up not using them due to the strong collinearity with the selected variables (see Supplementary Figure 1).
Annual averaged Chl-a concentration (mg/m-3) is the product generated by the NASA Ocean Biogeochemical Model (NOBM) based on data assimilation of remotely sensed Chl-a. Garver–Siegel–Maritorena model bio-optical products were derived from SeaWiFS and MODIS-Aqua satellite data and processed by ICESS at the University of California – Santa Barbara (https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov).
The EKE per unit mass are the square of the velocities (cm2/s2) from the SSALTO/DUACS (Segment Sol multi-missions dALTimetrie, d’Orbitographie et de localisation précise/Data Unification and Altimeter Combination System) delayed-time level-4 product distributed by Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (https://resources.marine.copernicus.eu/product-detail/SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_CLIMATE_L4_MY_008_057/INFORMATION). The sea level anomaly is the sea surface height above mean sea surface that is included in the absolute dynamic topography, and the mean was calculated over the 1993 – 2012 period. The velocities are geostrophic, estimated from the sea surface height anomaly (for the EKE) based on multi-satellite altimetry and thus should be interpreted as vertically averaged velocities dominated by the upper layer. Pseudo-streamlines are estimated from the geostrophic velocity field based on the absolute dynamic topography to provide a visualization of the mean currents (Supplementary Figure 2). EKE (log10 transformed) was therefore used as a proxy for ocean instability and mixing (Qiu et al., 2014; Uchida et al., 2017) and the streamlines mark the presence of currents and fronts associated to them. In fact, EKE marks the subtropical gyres western boundary currents: the Gulf Stream with onset of the North Atlantic Drift (and may be some interaction with the Labrador Current off Newfoundland); the Malvinas Current/Brazil-Malvinas Confluence Zone and parts of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current; the onset of the South Atlantic Current; the North Equatorial Counter Current and less strong the South Equatorial Current; and the Agulhas “leakage” around South Africa.
Statistical analysis of diversity indices
The relationship between the alpha diversity indices (H, S and E) and the oceanographic variables SST, Chl-a and EKE used here as explanatory variables or covariates, was statistically analyzed using a generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) approach. EKE and Chl-a were log10 transformed to stabilize the variances, i.e. lx = log10 (x+1) (a base of 10 was used to facilitate the interpretation). For H diversity, ‘Gaussian’ distribution was used, whereas for S (counts of species), the ‘Tweedie’ distribution was considered, since according to Wood et al. (2016), it is suitable for count data (using an estimated power of 1.01) and followed by the checking of the residual’s analyses. For E, a Beta distribution was used, with a logit function family, as recommended for proportions between [0,1]. The assumption of the lack of collinearity was tested (correlation between covariates) by estimating Spearman’s correlation coefficient between the three explanatory variables considered, and it was found that these were always below 0.7, which is the recommended rule of thumb (Zuur et al., 2010).
Spatial autocorrelation implies that samples that are closer to each other are more related than samples that are farther apart and therefore, are not independent, as assumed by most statistical models. To account for spatial autocorrelation, a statistical smoothing term was incorporated in the model as a random effect. In the H and S indices analysis, three spatial auto-correlation structures were evaluated for the random part of the model (exponential, spherical and, Gaussian), and, for each case the most appropriate one was selected using Akaike’s information criterion residuals distribution analysis and ‘acf’ and performance measurement criteria. In the case of Evenness, a term was added to the model, encompassing both latitude and longitude to account for the spatial component, since the use of Beta family did not permit the inclusion of a spatial autocorrelation structure (Wood, 2006).
In all cases, a full model was initially estimated using the three covariates, which was then subject to a model selection procedure, that included the interactions between terms. The best combination determined for each index based on Akaike’s information criterion (Zuur et al., 2010). Model assumptions were evaluated by analyzing the residuals distribution, including residuals auto-correlation (‘acf’) and covariates concurvity (to test collinearity) (Wood, 2006).
Species turnover analysis
Gradient forest analysis (GF) is a method that has been proven to be highly robust and efficient in identifying broad-scale environmental gradients of biodiversity patterns (; ; Pitcher et al., 2012). This method has been used to: determine thresholds in/as ecological indicators (; Waite et al., 2020); identify thresholds of anthropogenic change in marine communities () in genomics (); determine the major drivers of phytoplankton distribution in lakes (Roubeix et al., 2016). To consider multiple, co-occurring species in model fitting, a community-level model was used (Nieto-Lugilde et al., 2018). Within these the Gradient Forest Analysis (GF) was chosen because tree-based techniques are among the top performing technique for species distribution analysis that are capable of modeling nonlinear responses and interaction effects, and permit to identify species turnover thresholds along environmental gradients. Using a large set of independent data for evaluation, this technique was found to be highly effective at summarizing spatial variation in both the composition of species assemblages and species turnover (Stephenson et al., 2018). Gradient Forest analysis was therefore applied to the relative abundance of foraminifera and the three oceanographic satellite variables to estimate the location and importance of the community composition thresholds along environmental gradients in the Atlantic Ocean (). For this analysis, the species relative abundance was natural log transformed, after adding a constant of one (log1p R function). The GF (Pitcher et al., 2011; ) is a machine-learning modeling technique that predicts the distribution of a taxon as a function of relevant environmental variables, on the basis of fitting an ensemble of regression or classification trees. That is, multiple random forest models are run for each taxon separately and then simultaneously trained together to represent the community. Standardized measurements of change along environmental gradients for all taxa are therefore performed simultaneously to analyze the combined results.
This information is used to build ‘response curves’: empirical functions of change in composition for each environmental variable. After accounting for the distribution of the data along the gradient of the predictor, thresholds for which significant changes of community composition take place can be identified for each of the predictive variables, using the frequency histograms of the values at which splits happen in the individual decision trees. Furthermore, GF allows for the quantification of the relative importance of the predictor variables by averaging them across all taxa. Community threshold is defined as the zone, the critical value(s), along an environmental gradient where sharp increases or decreases in the occurrence of several taxa boost a change in community composition.
Results from this analysis were then used to transform the environmental layers to represent biological space, using the oceanographic layers: SST, EKE and Chl-a. A principal component analyses (PCA), was also applied to the predictions, and the first three axis of the PCA scaled into RGB space (Red-Green-Blue) for mapping species turnover. In addition, the main biogeographic regions of planktonic foraminifera were estimated using the k-means cluster method. The number of cluster groups was selected using the Elbow method (Supplementary Figure 3). Further details on the method and applications can be found elsewhere (; ; ; Nieto-Lugilde et al., 2018; Stephenson et al., 2018; ). All the analysis were done using the R libraries mgcv (e.g., Wood, 2011; Wood et al., 2016; Wood, 2017), the package gradientForest (), and the package NbClust () and factoextra (), for the determination of the number of clusters. Visualization of the GAMMs was done with the aid of library ‘mgcViz’ (), in R software.
Results
Spatial patterns of diversity indices
Spatial auto-correlation on alpha diversity indices was studied for the three indices and the variograms fitted with a spherical model (model results: S: nugget = 4.367, sill = 68.146 and range = 24669.715 (which would be equivalent to a linear model); H: nugget = 0.036, sill = 0.145 and range = 1930.019; E: nugget = 0.002, sill = 0.021 and range = 1378.223; Supplementary Figure 4). Species richness (S – Figure 2) shows the lowest number of species in the Arctic Ocean (1-4 species), followed by the Nordic Seas (1-11 species). Between 50 °N and 50 °S, the Atlantic shows almost symmetrical bimodal diversity richness south and north of the equator, but peaking values appear between 25 °N – 25 °S (15 to 27 species). Shannon diversity (H – Figure 2) is lower than 1 (corresponding to < 10 species) only close to the poles. Evenness (E – Figure 2) shows that 90% of the samples have less than 0.5 of encounter probability, that is, the probability of finding the same foraminifera species twice is less than 50% in most of the area. Ninety-eight percent of the samples with an E < 50% contain < 10 species of planktonic foraminifera and were located closer to the poles (> 50 °N and > 50 °S). In summary, the centers of the subtropical gyres show lower diversity (H), a lower number of species (S), and lower E (i.e., more uneven species distribution). In contrast, the equatorial region and the northern and southern boundaries of the hemispheric subtropical gyres and the eastern boundary currents exhibit higher species richness, a more even distribution of species abundance (lower E), and a H distribution pattern closer to E than to S.
Drivers of diversity
The response of the alpha diversity indices to a heterogeneous environment represented by SST, Chl-a, and EKE showed that the best model for all three indices included was given by the following formula: index ~ s(l10EKE, sst.woa13) + s(Chla). Further, adding spatial structure to the analysis improved the performance of the model and drastically decreased residual spatial autocorrelation in S and H. For S, a spherical model was fitted (adj- R2 = 82%; Tweedie (1.25)), whereas for the H index, the best model also included a spatial exponential correlation structure (adj- R2 = 71%). Results of the GAMMs for H, S and E show similar patterns and can be found in Supplementary Figure 4. The effect of SST was the strongest one for all indices (S, H, E) and controlled the large diversity patterns. A significant interaction between SST and EKE indicates that the relationship between EKE and diversity changes across the SST ranges (depicted by the interaction panel color shade, from yellow to blue, while the black lines represent species richness variability through EKE and SST, as can be observed in the Supplementary Figure 5). All three alpha diversity indices show an almost linear slightly negative relationship with Chl-a, but less critical than the SST/EKE interaction.
Species turnover
In the current work, GF analysis successfully modeled the whole assemblage simultaneously and determined the thresholds associated with continuous environmental gradients, the main species contributing to those changes, and the inference of the principal regions of occurrence along the Atlantic. The model explains a large proportion of the foraminifera assemblage variability (R2 = 59%, obtained by adding the R2-values for all predictors). The most critical environmental variables for the model were SST (R2 = 29%), Chl-a (R2 = 19%) and EKE (R2 = 11%). The primary community thresholds for foraminifera species turnover appeared at 5-10 °C and 22-28 °C SST, 0.05-0.15 mg m-3 Chl-a and, 1.2-2.0 cm2 s-2 log10 EKE energy (Figure 3), respectively.
Figure 3
Out of the 37 foraminifera species considered in our combined dataset, only 28 (Supplementary Material) contributed to the species turnover model (Figure 4). The species not considered by the model corresponded to those whose maximum abundance was ≤ 2% in our data set. The response of each species to the different environmental variables presented in Figure 5, reveals that the most important species highlighted in each environmental gradient have R2 > 0.7 (Figure 4). From these, six species are also fundamental for transfer functions (), which further reinforces the results obtained and the analysis used. As expected, due to its dominance in polar waters, Neogloboquadrina pachyderma (purple in Figure 5; most relevant species in GF) is within the species that show marked thresholds relative to SST, with a sharp, pronounced transition between 7 and 9 °C. In contrast, the tropical species Trilobatus sacculifer (red; second most relevant species in GF) and Globigerinoides ruber (formerly Globigerinoides ruber pink; orange) mark the extreme warm threshold between 22 and 27°C. Neogloboquadrina incompta (blue), the third most important species (4th in GF), signals a more abrupt threshold at 7°C followed by a stepwise transition between 15 and 23°C. Globoconella inflata (green) shows thresholds at 10°C and 22°C.
Figure 4
Figure 5
The most sensitive species to changes in Chl-a (Figure 5) are Globigerinoides white (formerly Globigerinoides ruber white) (green), Globigerinoides conglobatus (red), Globorotalia truncatulinoides (green-blue), Globigerinoides tenellus (olive green), and N. incompta (blue), all of these species with a R2 ≥ 0.6 for the GF model (Figure 4). Although all of them show thresholds below 0.1 mg m-3, subtropical species G. ruber, G. conglobatus and G. tenellus present the lowest (0.03 mg m-3) and more abrupt ones, followed by G. truncatulinoides with a more gradual transition between 0.04 and 0.11 mg m-3, whereas N. incompta shows a break at 0.09 followed by another, more gradual one at 0.4 mg m-3.
With respect to EKE, Pulleniatina obliquiloculata (dark pink), Globorotalia hirsuta (blue-green), Globigerinella siphonifera (green-brown), G. tenellus (olive green), and Orbulina universa (purple) show S-type relationships with steep thresholds but narrow intermediate plateaus (Figure 5). Their importance to the GF model (R2) exceeds 0.58, with the exception of O. universa with a value of 0.45 (Figure 4). G. tenellus, G. hirsuta and G. siphonifera behave similarly up to 0.9 cm2 s-2 followed by a clear divergence. G. tenellus shows steep slopes at 1 cm2 s-2 and 1.5 cm2 s-2, while G. hirsuta has an abrupt transition at 1.2 cm2 s-2 and then gradually increases until reaching a plateau at 2.4 cm2 s-2. G. siphonifera, on the other hand, continues the low slope increase up to 1.5 cm2 s-2, and then exhibits steep slopes at 1.7 cm2 s-2 and 2.1 cm2 s-2. P. obliquiloculata responds to EKE only above 1 cm2 s-2, and reveals a threshold at 1.4 cm2 s-2, followed by a less steep rise until 1.8 cm2 s-2 (Figure 5). O. universa reveals a steep increase until 0.9 cm2 s-2, followed by a slowly rising “plateau” between 0.9 and 1.6 cm2 s-2 and then another steep increase until 2.2 cm2 s-2.
When the species turnover map is transformed into the environmental space of the oceanographic variables and the bioregions are identified by cluster analysis (Figures 6A, B), not only the key latitudinal regions are visible, but the main current features are also superimposed; the eastern boundary upwelling systems (EBUS) off Namibia (Benguela Current) and Northwest Africa (Canary Current) as well as the Equatorial divergence, and the northern and southern subtropical fronts, i.e., the Gulf Stream-North Atlantic Drift path in the north, and the South Atlantic current in the south.
Figure 6
Discussion
Although the spatial distribution of diversity of planktonic foraminifera is likely to emerge from the operation of many different processes, the results of our statistical approaches (GAMM and GF analysis) confirm the importance of SST in controlling the variability in the diversity of planktonic foraminifera (~70%), in line with previous works (e.g., Rutherford and D'Hondt, 2000; Tittensor et al., 2010;
In the current work, kriging was used as an interpolation method to produce maps of diversity (without constraint by any environmental variable). The use of interpolated surfaces permits to better see the underlying patterns, especially when many samples may get overlaid, such as in Figure 3 by
Impact of SST
The importance of SST as a driver for foraminifera’ diversity has been well shown in previous studies (e.g., Morey et al., 2005;
The maps of species turnover transformed to the environmental space of these oceanographic variables, and the resulting cluster groups (Figure 6), clearly show the major latitudinal regions known since the work of
The central area around the equator corresponds to the tropical zone (Figure 6B). The north west corner coincides with previous works, being located near 38°N (as in
We believe that the location of the transitions of our bioregions improve the previous models due to higher accuracy in some aspects (e.g., reflecting main circulation pathways in the subtropical gyres). For example, in the Iberian margin where we added new samples by Salgueiro et al. (2008), the location of the transition between subtropical and temperate regions is found to be at 37°N (Cape São Vicente) and not at ~44°N as in previous works, which is in agreement with the local study of Salgueiro et al. (2008).
Impact of oceanographic currents, fronts and photosynthetic biomass
Differences in diversity are also depicted for EBUS. These systems, linked to the eastern boundary currents, lead to the occurrence of jets, filaments, and eddies that form along the Ekman divergence. However, their mesoscale variability is not depicted by altimetry, which is indeed known to be used to determine large-scale circulation (
Plankton foraminifera thresholds to SST, EKE and Chl-a gradients
When assemblage variability is accessed by GF, diverse morphologically defined species emerge with different importance and thresholds along the gradients of the environmental parameters identified as the main diversity drivers by our GAMM. For SST the most important species identified by GF (Figure 5 - N. pachyderma, T. sacculifer, N. incompta, G. inflata and G. ruber) are the same and appear in the same order of relevance as the ones driving transfer function results in the North and South Atlantic (
Figure 7

Spatial distribution and relative abundance of the 5 species with higher cumulative contribution in all environmental variables (abundance scale in both color and point size; crosses indicate zero abundance).
Considering Chl-a, the species identified by GF as the ones with a more substantial effect on community change along the Chl-a gradient are G. white, G. tenellus, G. conglobatus, G. truncatulinoides, and N. incompta (Figure 5). The three species with higher importance, G. white, G. conglobatus and G. tenellus, live in oligotrophic, subtropical to tropical waters (Rebotim et al., 2017; Schiebel and Hemleben, 2017;
Based on the work of Morard et al. (2019)G. white, G. conglobatus and G. tenellus are genetically linked and that might be one of the reasons explaining their similar response to environmental variability in the GF analysis. As spinose species, they prefer to prey on zooplankton like copepods and ciliates, keeping them between their spines during feeding (Schiebel and Hemleben, 2017, and references therein). Contrarily, in laboratory cultures, neanic and juvenile specimens preferentially digest phytoplankton (
The fourth species is the non-spinose species G. truncatulinoides, which, like other non-spinose species, is assumed to be omnivorous with a preference for herbivorous food (e.g., coccolithophores, diatoms) (Schiebel and Hemleben, 2017 and references therein). Although a deep-dwelling species, living below the thermocline in waters down to 600 m (e.g.,
The distribution of N. incompta (the last of the five-top species) includes the mid-latitudinal Atlantic, the subarctic/subantarctic domains, and the Atlantic province of the Nordic Seas (Figure 7), as previously reported (
The species that react the most to EKE variations are P. obliquiloculata, G. hirsuta, G. tenellus, G. siphonifera, and O. universa, reaching their highest importance above 2.4 cm2 s-2, whereas O. universa already starts to level out at 2.2 cm2 s-2 (Figure 5). These species distribution (Figure 7) at the latitudes of the equatorial current, counter- and undercurrent system and within the Caribbean Sea confirms that these species are strongly influenced by ocean currents and EKE. The occurrence of P. obliquiloculata and G. tenellus mainly in the area of the Gulf Stream (Figure 7) is particularly interesting as it justifies the species relationship to EKE values above 2.1 cm2 s-2.
Although with different importance, P. obliquiloculata and G. hirsuta, show EKE thresholds at 1.5 and 1.8 cm2 s-2 and 1.3 and 2.3 cm2 s-2, respectively. Both species are non-spinose, tropical to temperate and live in the intermediate-depth range (100-300 m; Schmuker and Schiebel, 2002; Wilke et al., 2009; Rebotim et al., 2017;
Spinose species G. tenellus lives in the upper mixed surface layer (e.g., Rebotim et al., 2017;
Tropical to subtropical spinose, symbiont bearing, and omnivorous species G. siphonifera includes four genotypes with several subtypes and two morphotypes (Schiebel and Hemleben, 2017 and references therein), which are not distinguished in ForCenS. Not all of those subtypes occur in the Atlantic Ocean, and some of them are associated with particular oceanic regions or currents (Schiebel and Hemleben, 2017). That species genotypic variety seems to be reflected by the GF results. The linear response to 1.5 cm2 s-2 EKE appears to be related to the patch within the South Atlantic’s subtropical gyre or the subtropical gyres in general. Therefore, this group would include both cosmopolitan genotypes and those linked to the North Atlantic Drift, Azores and Canary Currents. The populations occurring after the break at 1.5 cm2 s-2 and the one at 2.1 cm2 s-2 are likely to encompass those living within the equatorial current and counter-current region, i.e., the same as observed for P. obliquiloculata, and those within the central and southern Caribbean Sea (Figure 7), i.e., mainly the tropical genotype associated with SST > 25°C (Schiebel and Hemleben, 2017). The third group, related to the highest EKE values, are composed of populations thriving within the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Stream and potentially include the cosmopolitan genotype associated with SST > 17.5°C. The distribution of this group conforms to the high abundances observed by
Lastly, O. universa is a surface dwelling, mostly carnivorous species (e.g., Rebotim et al., 2017;
In summary, our study reveals that planktonic foraminifera diversity in the Atlantic Ocean, and on a large scale, is not only determined by SST but also by EKE (currents) and Chl-a (photosynthetic biomass). Furthermore, the GF analysis allowed the redefinition of the location of the biogeographic transition zones (e.g.,
Conclusions
The analytical approaches applied to the expanded ForCenS dataset provide empirical evidence and statistical validation (GAMM and GF model) that, besides the strong SST effect found by several published works, there is a consistent effect of the ocean basin-scale circulation and its associated Chl-a (photosynthetic biomass) to the diversity of planktonic foraminifera in the Atlantic Ocean.
The application of GF permitted to identify the most relevant species and their thresholds relatively to SST, Chl-a, and EKE along each parameter’s gradient. A detailed study of individual species composition change rate may help shed light on their ecological behavior. Furthermore, similarly to the SST transfer functions, it opens the door to establishing quantitative proxies to reconstruct past Chl-a and EKE conditions.
Furthermore, future changes in the prevailing oceanographic features associated with climate warming might be exposed if monitored at specific locations along the latitudinal and longitudinal diversity gradients.
Funding
This study received Portuguese national funds from FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology through projects UIDB/04326/2020, UIDP/04326/2020 LA/P/0101/2020 and PTDC/AAG-GLO/3737/2012 and PINFRA/22157/2016 – EMSO-PT. MR was funded by FCT program Ciência 2007 and is currently funded by a DL57 associated with the project “Real-time monitoring of bivalve dredge fisheries” (MONTEREAL), Program MAR2020. AV was funded by FCT researcher contract IF/01500/2014 during the initial phase of the study. ES was funded by FCT SFRH/BPD/111433/2015 and PINFRA/22157/2016 – EMSO-PT.
Publisher’s note
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Statements
Data availability statement
Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found at the PANGAEA DATA PUBLISHER under https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.873570; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.878069; and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.923299.
Author contributions
FA - Initial idea, discussed data, writing of the manuscript, secured the funds; MR – Conceptualization and methodology, statistical analysis, writing of the manuscript; ES – Assembled and revised the database, discussed data and revised the manuscript; PP – Calculated EKE and MKE and revised the manuscript; PC and AV discussed the data and revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.887346/full#supplementary-material
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Summary
Keywords
diversity, planktonic foraminifera, Atlantic Ocean, Chl-a, SST, kinetic energy
Citation
Rufino MM, Salgueiro E, Voelker AAHL, Polito PS, Cermeño PA and Abrantes F (2022) Ocean kinetic energy and photosynthetic biomass are important drivers of planktonic foraminifera diversity in the Atlantic Ocean. Front. Mar. Sci. 9:887346. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2022.887346
Received
01 March 2022
Accepted
14 November 2022
Published
29 November 2022
Volume
9 - 2022
Edited by
Aleksandra M. Lewandowska, Tvärminne Zoological Station, University of Helsinki, Finland
Reviewed by
Raphael Morard, University of Bremen, Germany; Marina C. Rillo, University of Oldenburg, Germany
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Copyright
© 2022 Rufino, Salgueiro, Voelker, Polito, Cermeño and Abrantes.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Marta M. Rufino, marta.m.rufino@gmail.com; Fatima Abrantes, fatima.abrantes@ipma.pt
This article was submitted to Global Change and the Future Ocean, a section of the journal Frontiers in Marine Science
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