The 37th PlyMSEF Plymouth Marine Science Medal Lecture, entitled 'Marine picocyanobacteria and the global C cycle – the beauty in small things revealed!' will be given by Dave Scanlan, Professor of Marine Sciences at the University of Warwick. The free lecture is open to all.
Oceans are the ‘beating heart’ of the Earth’s carbon cycle: with ~1 billion tonnes of phytoplankton alive in the ocean at any one time but with 45 billion tonnes of new phytoplankton produced each year, phytoplankton must reproduce themselves entirely roughly once a week. The functioning of this ‘fast’ marine phytoplankton carbon pump (i.e. the fixation of atmospheric CO2 into biomass and the subsequent sinking and burial of this biomass into the deep ocean) is critical for absorbing and sequestering the increased levels of CO2 currently entering the atmosphere from anthropogenic input. Cyanobacteria of the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus are numerically the most abundant phytoplankton component in ocean systems (and indeed on planet Earth as a whole!) contributing 25% of global oceanic primary production but with this figure increasing to as much as 90% of the total in oligotrophic regions.
This talk will explain controls on their abundance and activity but also delve into the specific adaptation mechanisms of these tiny marine phototrophs that have helped them successfully dominate ocean ecosystems.
