Phytoplankton niches estimated from CPR data in the North Atlantic

These response functions describe how the probability of occurrence of each species changes as a function of environmental conditions and can be reduced to a simple description of phytoplankton realized niches using the mean and standard deviation of each environmental variable, weighted by its response function.

Although there was substantial variation in the realized niche among species within groups, the envelope of the realized niches of North Atlantic diatoms and dinoflagellates are mostly separate in niche space.