Beyond the Plankton Ecology Group (PEG) Model : Mechanisms Driving Plankton Succession

By Ulrich Sommer, Rita Adrian, L. N. D. S. Domis, James J. Elser, U. Gaedke, Bas Willem Ibelings, Erik Jeppesen, M. Lürling, Juan Carlos Molinero, Wolf M. Mooij and 2 more. 2012

761 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The seasonal succession of plankton is an annually repeated process of community assembly during which all major external factors and internal interactions shaping communities can be studied. A quarter of a century ago, the state of this understanding was described by the verbal plankton ecology group (PEG) model. It emphasized the role of physical factors, grazing and nutrient limitation for phytoplankton, and the role of food limitation and fish predation for zooplankton. Although originally targeted at lake ecosystems, it was also adopted by marine plankton ecologists. Since then, a suite of ecological interactions previously underestimated in importance have become research foci: overwintering of key organisms, the microbial food web, parasitism, and food quality as a limiting factor and an extended role of higher order predators. A review of the impact of these novel interactions on plankton seasonal succession reveals limited effects on gross seasonal biomass patterns, but strong effects on species replacements.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/901186a9c8efa6ac3148cd547cf9fef97c33fa74

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Environmental Chemistry

1. Ulrich Sommer
2. M. Salcher
3. T. Zohary
4. G. Flaim

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. Ulrich Sommer
2. M. Salcher
3. T. Zohary

In Oceanography

1. Ulrich Sommer
2. M. Salcher
3. T. Zohary
4. G. Flaim
5. H. Hillebrand

Citations in the corpus

• Same same but different: ecological niche partitioning of planktonic freshwater prokaryotes (2013, background): “3), analogous to the wellknown PeG model for phyto- and zooplankton (Sommer et al., 1986, 2012).”
• Temperature and the size of freshwater phytoplankton (2020, background): “Warming causes lakes to stratify earlier in spring and de-stratify later in autumn (Adrian et al., 2009), lengthening the duration and increasing the stability of stratification (Kraemer et al., 2015), with potentially longer optimal growth periods for eurythermic plankton (Winder & Sommer, 2012).”