Heat stress drives increases in phytoplankton cell size in future oligotrophic oceans

Abstract

Warming and nutrient limitation are major stressors that affect primary production in the ocean, with cascading impacts on the food web. Yet, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how phytoplankton manage multiple stressors and the implications of these responses for phytoplankton biogeography. By combining theory, proteome allocation modeling, and climate projections, we identified two potential competing strategies for multi-stressor growth: (1) nutrient efficient smaller cells, or (2) heat-tolerant larger cells. We found that Prochlorococcus are more vulnerable in warmer, "heat-stressed", tropical regions due to greater heat sensitivity and lower lipid storage capacity to buffer oxidative stress, indicating a potential ecological niche for larger phytoplankton with lower sensitivity to oxidative stress, such as Synechococcus and picoeukaryotes. Our findings advocate for the inclusion of phytoplankton heat-stress responses in global models to more accurately predict their ecological niches as the climate warms.