Unexpected Taxa and Mixotrophy Help To “Sink” Carbon in Oceans

Abstract

In nutrient-poor regions of the ocean, several types of “unexpected taxa” are “most strongly associated with carbon export,” according to Lionel Guidi from the CNRS Laboratoire d'Oceanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer in France and his collaborators. Separately, but also unexpectedly, mixotrophy appears to play a larger than previously appreciated role in sequestering carbon into the ocean's depths, according to Ben Ward from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and Michael Follows of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.