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Harmful algal blooms: combining excitability and competition

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Abstract

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) characterized by a large concentration of toxic species appear rather rarely, but have a severe impact on the whole ecosystem. To study on possible trigger mechanisms for the emergence of HABs, we consider a nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton model to find the conditions under which a toxic phytoplankton species is able to form a bloom by winning the competition against its nontoxic competitor. The basic mechanism is related to the excitability of the system, i.e., the ability to develop a large response on certain perturbations. In a large class of models, a HAB results from a combined effect of nutrient enrichment and selective predation on different phytoplankton populations by zooplankton. We show that the severity of HAB is controlled by nutrient enrichment and zooplankton abundance, while the frequency of its occurrence depends on the strength of selectivity of predation. Thereby the intricate interplay between excitability, competition, and selective grazing pressure builds the backbone of the mechanism of the emergence of HABs.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Michaela Busch, Dave Caron, Helmut Hillebrand, and Stefanie Moorthi for valuable discussions. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank an unknown reviewer for pointing out a very interesting paper on zooplankton dynamics, which led to the analysis of the second model. S.C. thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for financial support in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship. U.F. thanks R. Roy and his group for their hospitality and the Burgers Program for Fluid Dynamics of the University of Maryland at College Park for financial support. U.F. acknowledges support from the Volkswagen-Foundation, Grant No. 85388.

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  1. ICBM, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Carl von Ossietzky Str. 9-11, 26111, Oldenburg, Germany

    Subhendu Chakraborty & Ulrike Feudel

  2. Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742-2431, USA

    Ulrike Feudel

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  1. Subhendu Chakraborty
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Correspondence to Subhendu Chakraborty.

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Chakraborty, S., Feudel, U. Harmful algal blooms: combining excitability and competition. Theor Ecol 7, 221–237 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-014-0212-1

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