Atlantic sediments reveal interacting environmental and physiological controls on coccolithophore calcite production

Description

Alba González-Lanchas and co-authors reconstruct how ocean algae build limestone shells from Atlantic seafloor sediments in a 2026 study. Coccolithophores, single-celled plankton armored in calcite plates, produce a share of the ocean's calcite and help steer the carbon cycle. What controls how much calcite a species makes, growth or environment, has been hard to settle from cultures.

Using sediments, they measured composition alongside growth and calcification rates to build a framework linking the fossils to the physiology that produced them. The dominant groups related growth to calcification in opposite ways, reflecting carbon budgets. A species group's growth turned out to be the control on its calcite output, and the pattern formed two zones divided near forty degrees north, matching chemistry gradients. North of the line, cells are limited by reaction rates; south of it, by supply. They expect that boundary to shift as ocean carbon changes.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13219798