Ocean Seminar: "Tropicalization and biodiversity restructuring of calcifying plankton in a rapidly warming Mediterranean Sea", by Arturo Lucas

The Ocean's Challenge groups are resuming their Ocean Seminars series, with Arturo Lucas presenting his recently published work from his PhD chapter.

Seminar: "Tropicalization and biodiversity restructuring of calcifying plankton in a rapidly warming Mediterranean Sea"

Speaker: Arturo Lucas Forcadell, Phd student at ICTA-UAB

• Date: Thursday, May 14th, 2026
• Time: 1pm
• Venue: Room Z/033 and online  https://zoom.us/j/93168443897?pwd=bAybnwW5FjewdRe6XpZ5K9sBy8K8u4.1

The Mediterranean Sea is particularly sensitive to climate change and is currently undergoing rapid environmental and ecological transformations. However, current understanding of biodiversity change in the region is largely derived from shallow benthic communities and macroorganisms, leaving pelagic ecosystems comparatively understudied. Calcifying phytoplankton and zooplankton provide a valuable perspective on pelagic ecosystem dynamics because their fossil record preserves signals of biodiversity change in deep-sea sediments, while their diversity closely reflects broader plankton diversity patterns. Using high-resolution sediment records from the western and central Mediterranean Sea, this study reconstructs diversity trends in the two dominant calcifying plankton groups—coccolithophores and planktonic foraminifera, over the last two millennia. The results reveal contrasting diversity of trajectories between these groups during the Industrial Era, alongside an increasing abundance of warm water coccolithophore species. These findings provide evidence for ongoing restructuring and tropicalization of Mediterranean pelagic ecosystems under rapid climate change.