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Science 30 March 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5820, pp. 1843 - 1846
DOI: 10.1126/science.1138544
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Reports

Emergent Biogeography of Microbial Communities in a Model Ocean

Michael J. Follows,1* Stephanie Dutkiewicz,1 Scott Grant,1,2 Sallie W. Chisholm3

A marine ecosystem model seeded with many phytoplankton types, whose physiological traits were randomly assigned from ranges defined by field and laboratory data, generated an emergent community structure and biogeography consistent with observed global phytoplankton distributions. The modeled organisms included types analogous to the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus. Their emergent global distributions and physiological properties simultaneously correspond to observations. This flexible representation of community structure can be used to explore relations between ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, and climate change.

1 Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 54-1514 MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
2 Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii, 1000 Pope Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
3 Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 48-419 MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mick{at}mit.edu

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