Special Issue "Changing Phytoplankton Communities in Aquatic Environments"
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Biodiversity and Functionality of Aquatic Ecosystems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 December 2023 | Viewed by 1962
Special Issue Editor
Interests: phytoplankton; estuaries; eutrophication; tidal freshwater zones; harmful algal blooms
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Phytoplankton are key players in aquatic ecosystems as the dominant primary producers, accounting for approximately 50% of the Earth’s primary productivity. Phytoplankton also have significant impacts on water quality and play vital roles in many ecosystem processes, such as biogeochemical processes, mediating cycling, sequestration, and exportation of inorganic and organic compounds. In addition, phytoplankton are excellent model systems that may be utilized to address fundamental ecological questions; furthermore, they are also widely used for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Overall, phytoplankton are a vital gauge of ecological condition and change, and they are effectively used to understand and predict the functioning and production of aquatic ecosystems and their responses to natural and anthropogenic-induced changes.
Phytoplankton communities are highly diverse in terms of composition and functional traits. Changes in phytoplankton communities affect the pathways and efficiency of energy transfer along the food web, thus impacting the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, research on changes in phytoplankton communities across different aquatic ecosystems, driven by natural and anthropogenic stressors, is urgently needed.
For this Special Issue, we welcome research articles and reviews addressing the causes, effects, and consequences of changing phytoplankton communities in aquatic ecosystems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Drivers of phytoplankton community structure;
- Phytoplankton diversity in future scenarios;
- Community stoichiometry;
- Functional traits and functional shifts in phytoplankton communities;
- Approaches to studying change in phytoplankton communities;
- Modeling phytoplankton communities.
Dr. Rita B. Domingues
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- phytoplankton
- ecosystem dynamics
- environmental drivers
- community ecology
- functional traits
- environmental change
- diversity
