Seascapes: the world of aquatic organisms as determined by their particulate natures

Abstract

Summary The interactions between planktonic organisms and their aquatic environment are mediated by diffusive processes on the scale of millimeters and smaller. The uptake of nutrients and food and the release of metabolic products creates localized patchiness that diffusive processes homogenize. Organism size determines, to a large extent, the character of these interactions. This paper builds a framework for considering these interactions, starting with an analysis of the diffusive environment around individual organisms and concluding with an integration over a range of organism sizes to describe aggregated properties. Several examples show the importance of the size-based abundance of organisms and other particles in determining the duration, spatial extent and frequency of environmental cues. One implication of these results is that microbial chemotactic behavior does not help them to find and utilize the majority of nutrient releases.