Costs and benefits of phytoplankton motility

Abstract

The motility skills of phytoplankton have evolved and persisted over millions of years, primarily in response to factors such as nutrient and light availability, temperature and viscosity gradients, turbulence, and predation pressure. Phytoplankton motility is broadly categorized into swimming and buoyancy regulation. Despite studies in the literature exploring the motility costs and benefits of phytoplankton, there remains a gap in our integrative understanding of direct and indirect energy expenditures, starting from when an organism initiates movement due to any biophysical motive, to when the organism encounters intracellular and environmental challenges. Here we gather available pieces of this puzzle from literature in biology, physics, and oceanography to paint an overarching picture of our current knowledge. The characterization of sinking and rising behavior as passive motility has resulted in the concept of sinking and rising internal efficiency being overlooked. We define this efficiency based on any energy dissipation associated with processes of mass density adjustment, as exemplified in structures like frustules and vacuoles. We propose that sinking and rising are active motility processes involving non-visible mechanisms, as species demonstrate active and rapid strategies in response to turbulence, predation risk, and gradients of nutrients, light, temperature, and viscosity. Identifying intracellular buoyancy-regulating dissipative processes offers deeper insight into the motility costs relative to the organism's total metabolic rate.

Keywords: energetic cost; motility benefit; phytoplankton; sinking speed; swimming speed.

Figure 1:

A conceptual depiction of the trade-off between the costs and benefits of phytoplankton motility in both swimmers and buoyancy regulators. The major components contributing to this trade-off are highlighted in two boxes. On the left, representative phytoplankton species are shown from top to bottom: a dinoflagellate, a diatom, and a cyanobacterium. Images are sourced from the public domain via Wikipedia.

Figure 2:

LOWESS regression curves depicting the semi-log volume[μm³]-speed[μm/s] relationship for flagellates (top-left), ciliates (top-right), a combination of flagellates and ciliates (middle-left), log-log length[μm]-speed[length/s] relationship for both flagellates and ciliates (middle-right), and the log-log size[mm]-speed[m/d] plot of sinking species/particles (bottom).

Figure 2:

LOWESS regression curves depicting the semi-log volume[μm³]-speed[μm/s] relationship for flagellates (top-left), ciliates (top-right), a combination of flagellates and ciliates (middle-left), log-log length[μm]-speed[length/s] relationship for both flagellates and ciliates (middle-right), and the log-log size[mm]-speed[m/d] plot of sinking species/particles (bottom).