Seaflow Search for Prochlorococcus
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- Visualizations by:
- Andrew J Christensen
- View full credits
Overview of data collected from research ship paths through the north Pacific Ocean measuring the phytoplankton species Prochlorococcus with an instrument called Seaflow. Additionally, results from the Darwin global ocean ecosystem computer model show interactions between Prochlorococcus, a copiotrophic heterotrophic bacteria and a shared grazer that limits the poleward extent of Prochlorococcus.
Research ships traveling from Hawaii into the north Pacific Ocean have measured quantities of tiny organisms in the water called Prochlorococcus using an instrument called SeaFlow. These organisms are phytoplankton that, like plants, turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. Prochlorococcus is both the smallest and most abundant photosynthesizing organism on the planet. Scientists observed a falloff in the quantity of these organisms as the ships moved northward; however, the falloff did not happen where the water cooled as the scientists expected. This was a bit of a mystery. The scientists hypothesized that the drop off was actually due to competition with other tiny organisms like heterotrophic bacteria and their shared predator, a type of zooplankton. They coded this relationship into a computational model of the oceans called Darwin. Sure enough, when the predator-prey relationship was included in the model, the drop off occurred in the same place as the ship measurements. This demonstrates a powerful combination of using computational models with the scientific method.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Visualizer
- Andrew J Christensen (SSAI) [Lead]
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Scientists
- Christopher Follett (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
- Francois Ribalet (University of Washington)
- Stephanie Dutkiewicz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Papers
This visualization is based on the following papers:Datasets used in this visualization
Darwin
The Darwin Project is an initiative to advance the development and application of novel models of marine microbes and microbial communities, identifying the relationships of individuals and communities to their environment, connecting cellular-scale processes to global microbial community structure.
Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Simons Foundation, NSF, NASA
Dataset can be found at: https://darwinproject.mit.edu/
See more visualizations using this data setship SeaFlow datasets v1.3 (A.K.A. doi10.5281/zenodo.3994953) (Collected with the SeaFlow sensor)
SeaFlow is an underway flow cytometer that provides continuous shipboard observations of the abundance and optical properties of small phytoplankton (<5 μm in equivalent spherical diameter, ESD).
Credit: Annette Hynes, Chris Berthiaume, Francois Ribalet, E Virginia Armbrust
Dataset can be found at: https://seaflow.netlify.app/
See more visualizations using this data setNote: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.