Fig. 4
From: Conceptualizing phytoplankton communities in the absence of resource based competitive exclusion
Predictions of phytoplankton community properties and resource distributions from a one-dimensional ecosystem model. (a) Relationship between nitrogen inventory (ΣN), far-field nitrogen concentration (S∞; blue line), and steady-state nitrogen supply rate (orange line). Dashed green lines bracket typical nitrogen S∞ values for oligotrophic subtropical ocean gyres. (b) Phytoplankton size distributions (blue line) (logarithm of cell number concentration per unit length versus logarithm of cell diameter) become increasingly steep as ΣN decrease from 20 to 4 µM, but all 25 phytoplankton size classes included in model initiations are retained at steady state (orange line) for all values of ΣN. (c) Steady-state partitioning of nitrogen inventories between phytoplankton (blue line), zooplankton (orange line), and dissolved (green line) pools. For ΣN < 10 µM, nearly all of the resource is sequestered in phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass (gray line). See methods for details.
