Fluctuating growth rate and spatial diffusion shape plankton diversity
Abstract
Planktonic communities exhibit ubiquitous population distributions and patchy spatial structures, yet the fundamental mechanisms driving them remain debated. Here, we derive these regularities from a minimalistic theoretical description that incorporates stochastic fluctuations in growth rates and effective ocean dispersal. We combine global metabarcoding, microscopy, and high-resolution chlorophyll datasets and show that the decay of spatial correlations, the crossover regimes of Taylor's law, the patterns of local species diversity and biomass distributions agree with common underlying dynamics. These results suggest that the intertwined effect of diffusivity and fluctuating growth rate, captured by an emergent correlation length, shapes plankton spatial heterogeneity from local to long-range scales, reconciling local variability with macroecological patterns.
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BibTeX
@misc{visco2026fluctuating,
title = {{Fluctuating growth rate and spatial diffusion shape plankton diversity}},
author = {Giorgio Vittorio Visco and Kobe Simoens and Emanuele Pigani and Diana Sarno and Samir Suweis and Daniele Iudicone and Sandro Azaele},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.39419},
eprint = {2609.39419},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39419},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Fluctuating growth rate and spatial diffusion shape plankton diversity
AU - Giorgio Vittorio Visco
AU - Kobe Simoens
AU - Emanuele Pigani
AU - Diana Sarno
AU - Samir Suweis
AU - Daniele Iudicone
AU - Sandro Azaele
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.39419
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39419
AB - Planktonic communities exhibit ubiquitous population distributions and patchy spatial structures, yet the fundamental mechanisms driving them remain debated. Here, we derive these regularities from a minimalistic theoretical description that incorporates stochastic fluctuations in growth rates and effective ocean dispersal. We combine global metabarcoding, microscopy, and high-resolution chlorophyll datasets and show that the decay of spatial correlations, the crossover regimes of Taylor's law, the patterns of local species diversity and biomass distributions agree with common underlying dynamics. These results suggest that the intertwined effect of diffusivity and fluctuating growth rate, captured by an emergent correlation length, shapes plankton spatial heterogeneity from local to long-range scales, reconciling local variability with macroecological patterns.
ER -