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Questioning High Nitrogen Fixation Rate Measurements in the Southern Ocean

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 29–30 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 11 January 2022

The Original Article was published on 26 October 2020

arising from T. Shiozaki et al. Nature Geoscience https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-00651-7 (2020)

Nitrogen fixation in the global ocean is a microbially mediated process performed by a special class of organisms able to enzymatically reduce dinitrogen gas (N2) to ammonia to fuel cellular nitrogen (N) demands1,2,3. There now seem to be few ocean habitats wholly unfavourable to at least a subset of N2-fixing organisms, and, in this context, Shiozaki et al.4 recently reported substantial nitrogen fixation in one of the coldest and most isolated regions of our planet: the coastal waters near the ice edge of Antarctica5,6. The authors speculated that iron additions from melting sea ice fuel N2 fixation activity of the unicellular cyanobacteria UCYN-A/haptophyte symbiosis and argue that the results suggest that “marine nitrogen fixation is a ubiquitous process in the global ocean, and that UCYN-A is the keystone species for making it possible”.

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Data availability

All data reported here are in raw form in Table 1, as shared by T. Shiozaki. Data are largely reproduced from the Supplementary Data of Shiozaki et al.4

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Oceanography, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Angelicque E. White

  2. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT, USA

    Julie Granger

  3. Ocean Sciences Department, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Kendra Turk-Kubo

Authors
  1. Angelicque E. White
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  2. Julie Granger
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  3. Kendra Turk-Kubo
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A.E.W. drafted the initial correspondence and text; all authors contributed to the writing and editing and have approved the submitted version.

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Correspondence to Angelicque E. White.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Douglas Capone for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Simon Harold; Kyle Frischkorn.

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White, A.E., Granger, J. & Turk-Kubo, K. Questioning High Nitrogen Fixation Rate Measurements in the Southern Ocean. Nat. Geosci. 15, 29–30 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00873-3

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