201 results match your criteria: "Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research[Affiliation]"

This case study of Kongsfjorden, western coastal Svalbard, provides insights on how freshwater runoff from marine- and land-terminating glaciers influences the biogeochemical cycles and distribution patterns of carbon, nutrients, and trace elements in an Arctic fjord system. We collected samples from the water column at stations along the fjord axis and proglacial river catchments, and analyzed concentrations of dissolved trace elements, together with dissolved nutrients, as well as alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon. Statistical tools were applied to identify and quantify biogeochemical processes within the fjord that govern the constituent distributions.

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Increasing frequencies of heatwaves threaten marine ectotherm species but not all alike. In exposed habitats, some species rely on a higher capacity for passive tolerance at higher temperatures, thereby extending time-dependent survival limits. Here we assess how the involvement of the cardiovascular system in extended tolerance at the margins of the thermal performance curve is dependent on warming rate.

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Gliomas are primary malignant brain tumors with a typically poor prognosis, exhibiting significant heterogeneity across different cancer types. Each glioma type possesses distinct molecular characteristics determining patient prognosis and therapeutic options. This study aims to explore the molecular complexity of gliomas at the transcriptome level, employing a comprehensive approach grounded in network discovery.

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The key locations of freshwater input driving Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) slowdown and their climate responses remain inconclusive. Using a state-of-the-art global climate model, we conduct freshwater hosing experiments to reexamine AMOC sensitivity and its climate impacts. The Irminger basin emerges as the most effective region for additional freshwater fluxes, causing the greatest AMOC weakening.

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Drought events are increasingly impacting Europe. The study of past droughts helps disentangle the different factors that trigger hydrological drought, helping to forecast future drought severity. Here we identify the historical drought events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in geochemical records of a stalagmite from Caumont cave in Northern France and develop a mechanistic understanding of their root causes.

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The anaerobic oxidation of alkanes is a microbial process that mitigates the flux of hydrocarbon seeps into the oceans. In marine archaea, the process depends on sulphate-reducing bacterial partners to exhaust electrons, and it is generally assumed that the archaeal CO-forming enzymes (CO dehydrogenase and formylmethanofuran dehydrogenase) are coupled to ferredoxin reduction. Here, we study the molecular basis of the CO-generating steps of anaerobic ethane oxidation by characterising native enzymes of the thermophile Candidatus Ethanoperedens thermophilum obtained from microbial enrichment.

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Direct and indirect effects of copepod grazers on community structure.

J Plankton Res

September 2024

Department of Marine Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Carl Skottsbergs gata 22B, Gothenburg 41319, Sweden.

Ecological theory and empirical research show that both direct lethal effects and indirect non-lethal effects can structure the composition of communities. While the direct effects of grazers on marine phytoplankton communities are well studied, their indirect effects are still poorly understood. Direct and indirect effects are inherently difficult to disentangle in plankton food webs.

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Mid-Pleistocene climate transition triggered by Antarctic Ice Sheet growth.

Science

August 2024

State Key Laboratory of Loess Science, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710061, China.

Article Synopsis
  • * This study links the transition to the unequal development of ice sheets in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, showing significant Antarctic Ice Sheet growth before major Northern Hemisphere ice expansion.
  • * The findings suggest that the Southern Ocean's sea ice and AIS spread could lead to cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially triggering the Mid-Pleistocene Transition and providing insights into current global warming effects on ice sheets.
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Prevalent interactions among marine phytoplankton triggered by long-range climatic stressors are well-known environmental disturbers of community structure. Dynamic response of phytoplankton physiology is likely to come from interspecies interactions rather than direct climatic effect on single species. However, studies on enigmatic interactions among interspecies, which are induced by bioactive extracellular compounds (BECs), especially between related harmful algae sharing similar shellfish toxins, are scarce.

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Assessing the global distribution and risk of harmful microalgae: A focus on three toxic Alexandrium dinoflagellates.

Sci Total Environ

October 2024

Key Laboratory of Marine Ecological Conservation and Restoration, Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China. Electronic address:

Harmful dinoflagellates and their resulting blooms pose a threat to marine life and human health. However, to date, global maps of marine life often overlook harmful microorganisms. As harmful algal blooms (HABs) increase in frequency, severity, and extent, understanding the distribution of harmful dinoflagellates and their drivers is crucial for their management.

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Trade-offs in a reef-building coral after six years of thermal acclimation.

Sci Total Environ

November 2024

Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany; Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany. Electronic address:

There is growing evidence that reef-building corals can acclimate to novel and challenging thermal conditions. However, potential trade-offs that accompany acclimation remain largely unexplored. We investigated physiological trade-offs in colonies of a globally abundant coral species (Pocillopora acuta) that were acclimated ex situ to an elevated temperature of 31 °C (i.

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The green seaweed : tomorrow's "wheat of the sea" in foods, feeds, nutrition, and biomaterials.

Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr

July 2024

Facultad de Farmacia, Food Colour and Quality Laboratory, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.

Article Synopsis
  • Sea lettuce, a green macroalgae, is gaining attention as a sustainable source of nutrition and protein for food and feed, amid increasing demand for plant-based alternatives.* -
  • The review covers the potential of sea lettuce in various industries beyond food, such as biomaterials and biorefineries, along with its nutritional benefits and processing methods.* -
  • It highlights the economic feasibility of using sea lettuce in aquafeed and discusses challenges and future research needs in sustainable aquaculture.*
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Polar cod (Boreogadus saida) is an endemic key species of the Arctic Ocean ecosystem. The ecology of this forage fish is well studied in Arctic shelf habitats where a large part of its population lives. However, knowledge about its ecology in the central Arctic Ocean (CAO), including its use of the sea-ice habitat, is hitherto very limited.

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High concentrations of microplastic (MP) particles have been reported in the Arctic Ocean. However, studies on the high-resolution lateral and vertical transport of MPs from the European waters to the Arctic are still scarce. Here, we provide information about the concentrations and compositions of MPs in surface, subsurface, and deeper waters (< 1 m, ∼ 4 m, and 17-1679 m) collected at 18 stations on six transects along the Norwegian Coastal Current (NCC) using an improved Neuston Catamaran, the COntinuos MicroPlastic Automatic Sampling System (COMPASS), and in situ pumps, respectively.

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Extensive ice coverage largely prevents investigations of Antarctica's unglaciated past. Knowledge about environmental and tectonic development before large-scale glaciation, however, is important for understanding the transition into the modern icehouse world. We report geochronological and sedimentological data from a drill core from the Amundsen Sea shelf, providing insights into tectonic and topographic conditions during the Eocene (~44 to 34 million years ago), shortly before major ice sheet buildup.

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Amphibians and fishes play a central role in shaping the structure and function of freshwater environments. These organisms have a limited capacity to disperse across different habitats and the thermal buffer offered by freshwater systems is small. Understanding determinants and patterns of their physiological sensitivity across life history is, therefore, imperative to predicting the impacts of climate change in freshwater systems.

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In situ decrease in rhodolith growth associated with Arctic climate change.

Glob Chang Biol

May 2024

Marine Research Department, Senckenberg am Meer, Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

Rhodoliths built by crustose coralline algae (CCA) are ecosystem engineers of global importance. In the Arctic photic zone, their three-dimensional growth emulates the habitat complexity of coral reefs but with a far slower growth rate, growing at micrometers per year rather than millimeters. While climate change is known to exert various impacts on the CCA's calcite skeleton, including geochemical and structural alterations, field observations of net growth over decade-long timescales are lacking.

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Global census of the significance of giant mesopelagic protists to the marine carbon and silicon cycles.

Nat Commun

April 2024

LOG, Laboratoire d'Océanologie et de Géosciences, Univ. Littoral Côte d'Opale, Univ. Lille, CNRS, IRD, UMR 8187, Wimereux, France.

Thriving in both epipelagic and mesopelagic layers, Rhizaria are biomineralizing protists, mixotrophs or flux-feeders, often reaching gigantic sizes. In situ imaging showed their contribution to oceanic carbon stock, but left their contribution to element cycling unquantified. Here, we compile a global dataset of 167,551 Underwater Vision Profiler 5 Rhizaria images, and apply machine learning models to predict their organic carbon and biogenic silica biomasses in the uppermost 1000 m.

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Rich microbial and depolymerising diversity in Antarctic krill gut.

Microbiol Spectr

April 2024

Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany.

With almost a quadrillion individuals, the Antarctic krill processes five million tons of organic carbon every day during austral summer. This high carbon flux requires a broad range of hydrolytic enzymes to decompose the diverse food-derived biopolymers. While krill itself possesses numerous such enzymes, it is unclear, to what extent the endogenous microbiota contribute to the hydrolytic potential of the gut environment.

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Ingestion of microplastics can lead to deleterious consequences for organisms, as documented by numerous laboratory studies. The current knowledge is based on a multitude of effect studies, conducted with conventional fossil-based and non-degradable plastics. However, there is a lack of information about the acceptance and the effects of novel bio-based and biodegradable plastics.

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Climate change is opening the Arctic Ocean to increasing human impact and ecosystem changes. Arctic fjords, the region's most productive ecosystems, are sustained by a diverse microbial community at the base of the food web. Here we show that Arctic fjords become more prokaryotic in the picoplankton (0.

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Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are a family of pollutants of high concern due to their ubiquity and negative human health impacts. The long-range marine transport of PFAS was observed during year-long deployments of passive tube samplers in the Fram Strait across three depth transects. Time weighted average concentrations ranged from 2.

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Hadarchaeota inhabit subsurface and hydrothermally heated environments, but previous to this study, they had not been cultured. Based on metagenome-assembled genomes, most Hadarchaeota are heterotrophs that grow on sugars and amino acids, or oxidize carbon monoxide or reduce nitrite to ammonium. A few other metagenome-assembled genomes encode alkyl-coenzyme M reductases (Acrs), β-oxidation, and Wood-Ljungdahl pathways, pointing toward multicarbon alkane metabolism.

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Climate indices are often used as a climate monitoring tool, allowing us to understand how the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events are changing over time. Here, based on complex statistical analysis we identify highly correlated significant pairs of compound events at the highest spatial resolution, on a monthly temporal scale across Europe. Continental-scale monthly analysis unleashes information on compound events such as high-risk zones, hotspots, monthly shifts of hotspots and trends, risk exposure to land cover and population, and identification of maximum increasing trends.

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In polar regions, the microphytobenthos has important ecological functions in shallow-water habitats, such as on top of coastal sediments. This community is dominated by benthic diatoms, which contribute significantly to primary production and biogeochemical cycling while also being an important component of polar food webs. Polar diatoms are able to cope with markedly changing light conditions and prolonged periods of darkness during the polar night in Antarctica.

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