Suzana Gonçalves Leles

University of Southern California | USC

A Lagrangian study was conducted in a eutrophic estuary (Guanabara Bay, Brazil) to investigate in situ plankton trophodynamics under the influence of the cold, nutrient-rich South Atlantic Coastal Water in a short-term temporal variability (scale of hours). We tested the hypothesis that the base of the plankton food web is composed of small cells a...

Planktonic models represent a powerful tool for creating hypotheses and making predictions about the functioning of marine ecosystems. Their complexity varies according to the number of state variables and the choice of functional forms. We evaluated plankton models during the last 15 years (n =145) with the aims of understanding why they differ in...

This first comprehensive analysis of the global biogeography of marine protistan plankton with acquired phototrophy shows these mixotrophic organisms to be ubiquitous and abundant; however, their biogeography differs markedly between different functional groups. These mixotrophs, lacking a constitutive capacity for photosynthesis (i.e., non-constit...

Protist plankton are major members of open-water marine food webs. Traditionally divided between phototrophic phytoplankton and phagotrophic zooplankton, recent research shows many actually combine phototrophy and phagotrophy in the one cell; these protists are the 'mixoplankton'. Under the mixoplankton paradigm, 'phytoplankton' are incapable of ph...

Microbes form the base of food webs and drive biogeochemical cycling. Predicting the effects of microbial evolution on global elemental cycles remains a significant challenge due to the sheer number of interacting environmental and trait combinations. Here, we present an approach for integrating multivariate trait data into a predictive model of tr...

Seasonal upwelling and rainfall events influence estuarine communities, but their interaction is not well understood, particularly in estuaries impacted by coastal eutrophication. Here we evaluated the responses of the plankton community to multiple drivers in Guanabara Bay, a eutrophic estuary in the western Atlantic influenced by coastal upwellin...

News & Views Multi-omics and geochemical data reveal that dinoflagellates, abundant marine microorganisms, utilize numerous metabolic strategies to survive in diverse ocean environments.

Different hypotheses have been proposed explaining plankton community assembly and how changes in biodiversity can impact ecosystem function. Mixoplankton (photo-phago-trophs) are important members of the plankton, but science lacks a clear understanding of their role in plankton succession. Here, we used a modelling approach to evaluate the season...

Protist plankton contribute to both primary and secondary production in the oceans fuelling life within pelagic food webs. Despite commonly perceived as ‘phytoplankton’ or ‘zooplankton’, most protist plankton are mixotrophs through the combination of photoautotrophy and phagotrophy within a single cell. Nevertheless, we lack a clear understanding o...

Aim Most protist plankton are mixotrophic, with potential to engage in photoautotrophy and phagotrophy; however, the ecology of these organisms has been misdiagnosed for over a century. A large proportion of these organisms are constitutive mixotrophs (CMs), with an innate ability to photosynthesize. Here, for the first time, an analysis is present...

Mixotrophy is widespread among protist plankton displaying diverse functional forms within a wide range of sizes. However, little is known about the niches of different mixotrophs and how they affect nutrient cycling and trophodynamics in marine ecosystems. Here we built a plankton food web model incorporating mixotrophic functional diversity. A di...

The study of near-pristine estuaries can be used as a tool for mitigation projects of harmful effects in anthropogenic eutrophic systems, since one can analyze the effect of temporal and spatial variations generated mainly by natural forces. Phytoplankton taxonomy has been used as a classical indicator to assess changes in transitional water commun...