Acevedo-Trejos, Esteban, Brandt, Gunnar, Smith, S. Lan and Merico, Agostino ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8095-8056 (2016) PhytoSFDM version 1.0.0: Phytoplankton Size and Functional Diversity Model. Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 9 (11). pp. 4071-4085. DOI https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2016-102.

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Abstract

Biodiversity is one of the key mechanisms that facilitate the adaptive response of planktonic communities to afluctuating environment. How to allow for such a flexible response in marine ecosystem models is, however, not entirelyclear. One particular way is to resolve the natural complexity of phytoplankton communities by explicitly incorporating alarge number of species or plankton functional types. Alternatively, models of aggregate community properties focus onmacroecological quantities such as total biomass, mean trait,and trait variance (or functional trait diversity), thus reduc-ing the observed natural complexity to a few mathematicalexpressions. We developed the PhytoSFDM modelling tool,which can resolve species discretely and can capture aggre-gate community properties. The tool also provides a set ofmethods for treating diversity under realistic oceanographicsettings. This model is coded in Python and is distributed asopen-source software. PhytoSFDM is implemented in a zero-dimensional physical scheme and can be applied to any location of the global ocean. We show that aggregate communitymodels reduce computational complexity while preservingrelevant macroecological features of phytoplankton commu-nities. Compared to species-explicit models, aggregate models are more manageable in terms of number of equationsand have faster computational times. Further developmentsof this tool should address the caveats associated with theassumptions of aggregate community models and about implementations into spatially resolved physical settings (one-dimensional and three-dimensional). With PhytoSFDM weembrace the idea of promoting open-source software and en-courage scientists to build on this modelling tool to furtherimprove our understanding of the role that biodiversity playsin shaping marine ecosystems.

Document Type:	Article
Programme Area:	UNSPECIFIED
Research affiliation:	Integrated Modelling > Systems Ecology
Refereed:	Yes
Open Access Journal?:	Yes
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2016-102
ISSN:	1991-962X
Date Deposited:	03 Jul 2019 13:54
Last Modified:	26 Mar 2024 13:28
URI:	http://cris.leibniz-zmt.de/id/eprint/2242

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