Competition among marine phytoplankton for different chelated iron species

Dissolved-iron availability plays a critical role in controlling phytoplankton growth in the oceans1,2. The dissolved iron is overwhelmingly (∼99%) bound to organic ligands with a very high affinity for iron3,4,5, but the origin, chemical identity and biological availability of this organically complexed Fe is largely unknown6. The release into sea water of complexes that strongly chelate iron could result from the inducible iron-uptake systems of prokaryotes (siderophore complexes)7,8,9 or by processes such as zooplankton-mediated degradation and release of intracellular material (porphyrin complexes). Here we compare the uptake of siderophore- and porphyrin-complexed 55Fe by phytoplankton, using both cultured organisms and natural assemblages. Eukaryotic phytoplankton efficiently assimilate porphyrin-complexed iron, but this iron source is relatively unavailable to prokaryotic picoplankton (cyanobacteria). In contrast, iron bound to a variety of siderophores is relatively more available to cyanobacteria than to eukaryotes, suggesting that the two plankton groups exhibit fundamentally different iron-uptake strategies. Prokaryotes utilize iron complexed to either endogenous7,8,9 or exogenous siderophores9, whereas eukaryotes may rely on a ferrireductase system10,11 that preferentially accesses iron chelated by tetradentate porphyrins, rather than by hexadentate siderophores. Competition between prokaryotes and eukaryotes for organically-bound iron may therefore depend on the chemical nature of available iron complexes, with consequences for ecological niche separation, plankton community size-structure and carbon export in low-iron waters.