Functional Trait Database describing micro-phytoplankton diversity from the North-West French coast

The primary producers represent an essential link for the ecosystem functioning. Understanding the community structure through long-term monitoring is key to understand the impact of climate and environmental changes at both global and local scale. To better understand those communities, many national and international networks have been collecting samples for the study of micro-phytoplankton (20µm to 200µm) diversity. This correspond to larger organisms among phytoplankton that can be accessed through light microscopy. However, it is hard or impossible to access pico or nano-phytoplankton through microscopy only. Looking at functional group distribution and variations with microphytoplankton data could provide information on overall primary producers’ adaptation to climate change. For instance, modification on large and small cells ratio could impact coastal ecosystem functioning and affect zooplankton, larvae and shellfish of ecological or economical interest.

The phytoplankton diversity is widely explored through a taxonomical approach. Nevertheless, a more global approach that could enable to examine primary producers not through taxonomy but functional diversity – through their direct adaptation to environment variables – could provide insights into how phytoplankton community respond to environmental changes and better apprehend global effect on the ecosystem functioning.

Records of the coastal micro-phytoplankton diversity are available at a national scale thanks to the REPHY (REPHY – French Observation And Monitoring Program For Phytoplankton And Hydrology In Coastal Waters, 2021). Here, we present a trait database of micro-phytoplankton entities as seen through the monitoring program for the North-West of France (Lefran et al., 2022). It has been built for the purpose of studying the impacts of environmental changes in the Eastern English Channel through a functional approach. It contains description of 93 entities through morphological, physiological and behavioural traits.

The initial work of Ramond and collaborators (2018) enabled to gather most of the information contained in this database. Morphological traits were each revised with nordicmicroalgae.org to better correspond to organisms from the North-East Atlantic (by opposition to measures taken from tropical organisms). Indeed, size can vary a lot depending on the organism’s stage of life (diatoms) or its environment. Gaps and additional traits were filled through an extensive literature review.

The excel file is composed of 2 tabs:

·       The first tab contains the datatable with all relevant information as described in the table below. Certain boxes have a comment tag indicating the reference associated to the trait, especially when the trait was not found in the main literature sources or did not correspond to local observations and required further research. This tab can be converted in a csv file to be used for functional analysis.

·       The second tab lists the sources used to complete the table. Books and websites with large records on phytoplankton traits are listed above, followed by species specific literature information.

Credits:

This trait table has been created as part of the S3-Eurohab project (https://www.s3eurohab.eu). It has been reviewed with members of the REPHY program. We recognise that nordicmicroagale.org has been a vital source of information for the study of morpho-functional traits. This database would not be as thorough without the information they openly share. The morphological information is accurate to this date (2024) but could be subject to change with new research findings.

References:

Lefran, A., Françoise, S., Legendre, A., Hebert, P., Hernandez-Fariñas, T., Claquin, P., 2022. Dataset of micro-phytoplankton biodiversity in the Eastern Channel area from 1987 to 2019. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7496602

Ramond, P., Siano, R., Sourisseau, M., 2018. Functional traits of marine protists. https://doi.org/10.17882/51662

REPHY – French Observation And Monitoring Program For Phytoplankton And Hydrology In Coastal Waters, ., 2021. REPHY dataset - French Observation and Monitoring program for Phytoplankton and Hydrology in coastal waters. Metropolitan data. https://doi.org/10.17882/47248