New paper: Mechanisms of Heterogeneity in Phytoplankton

I am pleased to announce the publication of our paper “Use of Agent-Based Modeling To Explore the Mechanisms of Intracellular Phosphorus Heterogeneity in Cultured Phytoplankton“ by Neil Fredrick et al. in Applied & Environmental Microbiology. I want to use this post to highlight an important point that has real consequences for our biogeochemical models. This paper is related to a previous one where we looked at the nutrient content heterogeneity in a field population. One of the main conclusions from that research was that microscale patchiness leads to large heterogeneity. This process is related to zooplankton excretion and thus does not operate in laboratory experiments. This means the heterogeneity in laboratory experiments is much lower than in the field, and that, considering the effect of heterogeneity, means that parameters estimated from the lab are not applicable to the field. Specifically, the maximum growth rate in the Droop quota model should be reduced by a factor of about 0.7. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the laboratory and field results:

Here are links to the “lab” and “field” papers.
http://aem.asm.org/content/79/14/4359.short
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10452-011-9384-6
And if you want to try the model, here it is:
http://www.systemsbioecology.org/files/QuotaHeterogeneity/QuotaHeterogeneity.html