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The African Development Corridors database is publicly available. The visualisation of the database that can be explored interactively here: https://dcp-unep-wcmc.opendata.arcgis.com/. The data is deposited in the Dryad Digital Repository referenced as Thorn, J. P.R., Mwangi, B.; Juffe Bignoli, D., The African Development Corridors Database, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9kd51c5hw (2022)43. The final data were compiled into an online Master database spreadsheet, using the project code data as the merging attribute of the spatial and tabular database (AfricanDevelopmentCorridorsDatabase2022.csv). The African Development Corridor Database is presented as a GeoPackage file (.gpkg) and ESRI file Geodatabase (.gdb) composed by line and point feature datasets with the 22 associated attributes for all mapped corridors, a table with corridors that could not be mapped (also with the attributes), and a table with all sources consulted for each project code.We created a data standard to ensure a systematic and standardised data collection (Supplementary Table 2). Each data record in the database represents a project within a development corridor. To group all projects within the same development corridor we used a unique identifier composed by three letters that identified the corridor plus a number unique for each project or record. For example, the Lamu port project in Kenya within the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) was represented as LAP000. In this corridor we identified 20 projects, from LAP0001 which is the Lamu Port to LAP0020 which is the Isiolo-Lokichar-Lodwar-Nadapal Highway in Kenya. In addition to the unique identifier for each project, the data standard includes data attributes that provide detailed information about each project. Table 1 describes the attributes included in the database. Supplementary Table 3 summarises the 79 corridors included in the database.Table 1 List of the attributes included in the African Development Corridors Database.Full size tableInfrastructure types and status of development corridors in AfricaThe data consists of a total of 79 corridors consisting of 184 projects (Fig. 2). Of the 12 infrastructure types, the most predominant form of infrastructure in Africa’s development corridors is roads (n = 64, 34.8%), followed by wet ports (n = 38, 20.7%), passenger and freight railways (n = 33, 17.9%), and airports (n = 14, 7.6%). Fewer resort cities, electricity transmission lines, dry ports, industrial parks, and water pipelines comprise development corridors (all ≤ n = 3, 1.6%) (Fig. 3). We acknowledge our study might not include many infrastructure developments that are components projects of larger programmes but are not yet labelled as corridors. A total of 107 (58.7%) projects are operational, 35 (19%) are in progress, 25 (13.6%) are planned, 25 (13.9%) are being upgraded, and 2(1%) are on hold.Fig. 2Map showing the distribution of all the development corridors included in the African Development Corridors Database and their infrastructure type.Full size imageFig. 3Subset of highest frequencies of key attributes captured in the database.Full size imageSpatial distributionThe linear distance of development corridors in Africa is 122,294 km – which approximates to three times the Earth’s circumference, with an average of 1703.84 ± 213.19 km (mean, SE), ranging from 4–11,141 km. In terms of number of projects per country, Kenya has the most projects (n = 34, 18.5%), followed by Tanzania (n = 18, 9.8%), South Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo (n = 17, 9.2% ea.), Ethiopia (n = 15, 8.2%), Mozambique and Zambia (n = 14, 7.6%), Angola, Uganda, Guinea and Cameroon (n = 12, 6.5%), Namibia (n = 11, 6.0%), Republic of Congo (n = 10, 5.4%), Burundi and Chad (n = 9, 4.9%), Malawi, Senegal, and Zimbabwe (n = 8, 4.4%), and Burkina Faso and Ghana (n = 7, 3.8%). Due to differences in the frequency and quality that countries publish data on infrastructure and development corridor investments, coverage may be lower for some regions, or some periods (i.e., recent, or further in the past).Investments in development corridorsAdjusting for inflation, the total investment of development corridors that is captured in the database ranges between USD 547.29–658.62 billion. The average cost of a corridor ranges between USD 3.46 ± 1.92 billion and USD 4.17 ± 2.04 billion. This is a notable sum, considering the average GDP in sub-Saharan Africa is USD 1.48 billion44. The most expensive development corridor project is the first of the nine Trans African Highway projects at USD 78.20 billion (when adjusted for inflation) – comprising transcontinental roads across Africa. We were able to capture the budget (or at least a proportion of the budget) for 84.7% of all projects.Temporal evolution of growth of development corridorsInvestments started in the 1800s and have increased exponentially (Fig. 4). Over a fifty-year period, the greatest number of investments took place between 1950 and 2000. Spikes in investments occurred particularly around 1900, which was when there was a wave of new imperialism across the continent, followed in the 1960s when many countries across sub-Saharan Africa gained independence. The third spike in investment was in the last decade, particularly since 2013, when we have seen rapid growth in foreign direct investment in Africa under initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative. According to the Ernst and Young Africa Attractiveness Survey (2019)45, the largest foreign direct investment (in terms of capital) between 2014–2018 came from China (USD 72,235 million), France (USD 34,172 million), USA (USD 30,885 million), the United Arab Emirates (USD 25,278 million) and the United Kingdom (USD 17,768 million).Fig. 4(a) Temporal evolution of investment in development corridors in Africa. (b) Annual investments per annum in development corridors in Africa (USD maximum, before adjusting for inflation).Full size imageDonors that are funding development corridorsAcross Africa, regional development banks invested the most in development corridors (30.8%), with the African Development Bank funding the majority (24.3%) of all projects. Outside of Africa, the regional development banks that invested in the most projects are the Export-Import Bank of China (n = 13, 3.8%), the European Investment Bank (n = 10, 2.8%) and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (n = 4, 1.2% ea.). National governments funded about 29.8% of all projects. The Government of Kenya funded the most projects (n = 26; 7.5%), followed by the Governments of Tanzania (n = 7, 2.0%) and South Africa (n = 4, 1.2%). Multilateral banks funded 10.9% of projects – mostly from the World Bank (n = 33, 9.54%) and a few from the International Finance Corporation (n = 4, 1.6%). The international development community funded only 6.1% – of which the OPEC Fund for International Development funded four projects. Private companies continue to invest in a small percentage of development corridors (3.5%), but this is higher than national banks that invest in 3.2%. Regional Economic Community bodies have invested in 15 (4.8%) of all 184 projects. The average number of donors per corridor ranged from one to 12.Weighting of investments by donor typeIn terms capital funded per donor type, Regional Development Banks invested the most (totalling USD 30.72 billion), followed by national governments (USD 20.45 billion). The figure then drops substantially to international development agencies (USD6.17 billion) and multilateral banks (USD 3.76 billion). These results are limited by the fact that we were only able to capture the amount funded delineated by donor type for 22.58% (or USD 70.24 billion) of the minimum of all investments (USD 311.14 billion) before adjusting for inflation.Commodities transportedA total of 147 commodities were captured. The top twenty commodities traded were rice (n = 52, 28.7% of all projects), sugar (27.0%), fish and petroleum (24.3% ea.), passengers (21.6%), textiles (21.1%), maize (19.5%), coffee (18.9%), cement and timber (17.8% ea.) followed by cotton, crude petroleum, vehicle spare parts, beverages, copper, fruit, fertilisers, gold, pharmaceutical products, and tobacco.Beneficiaries and net supplier or receiverApproximately 213 different beneficiaries were identified – predominantly local communities (n = 134 of projects, 72.8%), followed by national and local governments (63.0%), traders (51.1%), agricultural farmers and livestock producers (27.7%), ports (27.2%), industries (25.5%), truck drivers (22.3%), tourists (17.4%), entrepreneurs (12.0%), and logistics companies (11.4%). Almost all (89.1%) of corridors are net receivers and suppliers of commodities, while only 13 (7.1%) are net suppliers and seven are net receivers (3.8%). More

DataSea Surface temperature (1850–2019)Sea Surface Temperature (SST, °C) from 1850 to 2019 originated from the COBE SST2 1° × 1° gridded dataset74, https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.cobe2.html. SST data were interpolated on a 0.25° latitude × 0.25° longitude grid on a monthly scale from 1850 to 2019.BathymetryBathymetry (m) came from GEBCO Bathymetric Compilation Group 2019 (The GEBCO_2019 Grid—a continuous terrain model of the global oceans and land). Data are provided by the British Oceanographic Data Centre, National Oceanography Centre, NERC, UK. doi:10/c33m. (https://www.bodc.ac.uk/data/published_data_library/catalogue/10.5285/836f016a-33be-6ddc-e053-6c86abc0788e/). These data were interpolated on a 0.25° latitude × 0.25° longitude grid.Biological dataDaily mass concentration of chlorophyll-a in seawater (mg/m3) originated from the Glob Colour project (http://www.globcolour.info/). The product merges together all the daily data from satellites (MODIS, SeaWIFS, VIIRS) available from September 1997 to December 2019, on a 4 km resolution spatial grid. These data were interpolated on a daily scale on a 0.25° latitude × 0.25° longitude grid. These data were only used to map the average maximum standardised SSB (mdSSB) around the North Sea (Fig. 1a). When long-term changes in mdSSB were examined, we used modelled chlorophyll data (see section “Climate projections” below).Cod recrutment at age 1, Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB) and fishing effort F for 1963–2019 originated from ICES35.We used a plankton index of larval cod survival, which was an update of the index proposed by Beaugrand and colleagues33. Based on data from the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR)75, the index is based on the simultaneous consideration of six key biological parameters important for the diet and growth of cod larvae and juveniles in the North Sea:76,77 (i) Total calanoid copepod biomass as a quantitative indicator of food for larval cod, (ii) mean size of calanoid copepods as a qualitative indicator of food, (iii-iv) the abundance of the two dominant congeneric species Calanus finmarchicus and C. helgolandicus, (v) the genus Pseudocalanus and (vi) the taxonomic group euphausiids. A standardised Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is performed on the six plankton indicators for each month from March to September for the period 1958–2017 (table 60 years × 7 months-6 indicators). The plankton index is simply the first principal component of the PCA33.Climate projectionsClimate projections for SST and mass concentration of chlorophyll in seawater (kg m−3) originated from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6)5 and were provided by the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). We used the projections known as Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) 245 and 585 corresponding respectively to a medium and a high radiative forcing by 2100 (2.5 W m−2 and 8.5 W m−2)78. The daily simulations of four different models (i.e. CNRM-ESM2-1, GFDL-ESM4, IPSL-CM6A-LR, and UKESM1-0-LL) covering the time period 1850–2014 (historical simulation) and 2015–2100 (future projections for the two SSPs scenarios) were used. All the data were interpolated on a 0.25° by 0.25° regular grid. Key references (i.e. DOI and dataset version) are provided in Supplementary Text 1. Long-term changes in modelled SSB were based on these data (including modelled daily chlorophyll data).The FishClim modelLet Kt be the maximum standardised Spawning Stock Biomass (mdSSB hereafter) that can be reached by a fish stock at time t for a given environmental regime φt. Xt+1, standardised SSB (dSSB hereafter) at time t+1 was calculated from dSSB at time t as follows:$${X}_{t+1}={X}_{t}+r{X}_{t}left(1-frac{{X}_{t}}{{K}_{t}}right)-alpha {X}_{t}$$
(1)
α is the fishing intensity that varies between 0 (i.e. no fishing) and 1 (i.e. 100% of SSB fished in a year). It is important to note that α (see Eq. (10)) should not be mistaken with ICES fishing effort F79 (calculated from SSB). The second term of Eq. (1) is the intrinsic growth rate of the fish stock that is a function of both Kt and the population growth rate r (r was fixed to 0.5 in most analyses, but see Fig. 3d however where r varied from 0.25 to 0.75). The population growth rate r is highly influenced by the life history traits of a species80 but also by environmental variability54,55,81. Here, the population growth rate was assumed to be constant in space and time and the influence of environmental variability occurred exclusively through its effects on Kt. We made this choice to not multiply the sources of complexity and errors (i.e. population growth rate is very difficult to assess and varies with age80). The third term reflects the part of dSSB that is lost by fishing. Note that natural mortality is not explicitly integrated in Eq. (1) because this process is difficult to assess with confidence at the scale of our study. Here, we assumed that the second term of Eq. (1) implicitly considered this process; when K increases, it is likely that natural mortality diminishes, especially at age 134. We tested this assumption below. Most of the time when fishing occurs, Xt {y}_{{{{rm{opt}}}}}$$
(3)
Here yopt= 5.4 °C and t1 and t2 were fixed to 5.7 °C and 4 °C, respectively, so that the thermal niche was close to that assessed by Beaugrand and colleagues31 (Supplementary Fig. 2). This Supplementary Figure compares the thermal response curve we chose in the present study with the data analysed in Beaugrand and colleagues31. The figure shows that the response curve (red curve) is close to the histogram showing the number of geographical cells with a cod occurrence as a function of temperature varying between −2 °C (frozen seawater) and 20 °C.Because t1  > t2, the niche was slightly negative asymmetrical (Supplementary Fig. 1). U1(y) was the first component of mdSSB along the thermal gradient y. c was the maximum value of mdSSB; c was fixed to 1 so that mdSSB varied between 0 and 184,85. y was the value of SST. Slight variations in the different parameters of the niche did not alter either the spatial patterns in the distribution of mdSSB nor the correlations with recruitment.To model the bathymetric niche of cod, we used a trapezoidal function. Changes in mdSSB, U2, along bathymetry, were assessed using four points (θ1, θ2, θ3, θ4):$$begin{array}{cc}{{U}}_2({{z}})=0 & {{{{{{{rm{When}}}}}}; z}}le {{{{rm{theta }}}}}_{1}end{array}$$
(4)
$$begin{array}{cc}{{U}}_2({{z}})=frac{z-{theta }_{1}}{{theta }_{2}-{theta }_{1}}c & {{{{{rm{When}}}}}},{{{{rm{theta }}}}}_{1} < {{z}}le {{{{rm{theta }}}}}_{2}end{array}$$ (5) $$begin{array}{cc}{{U}}_2({{z}})={{c}} & {{{rm{When}}}},{{{{rm{theta }}}}}_{2} < {{z}} < {{{{rm{theta }}}}}_{3}end{array}$$ (6) $${{U}}_2begin{array}{cc}(z)=frac{{theta }_{4}-z}{{theta }_{4}-{theta }_{3}}c & {{{rm{When}}}},{{{{rm{theta }}}}}_{3}le {{z}} < {{{{rm{theta }}}}}_{4}end{array}$$ (7) $$begin{array}{cc}{{{rm{U}}}}_2({{z}})=0 & {{{rm{When}}}}; {{{rm{z}}}}ge {{{theta }}}_{4}end{array}$$ (8) With θ2 ≥ θ1, θ3 ≥ θ2 and θ4≥ θ3 and y the bathymetry; θ1 = 0, θ2 = 10−4, θ3 = 200 and θ4 = 600 m (Supplementary Fig. 1). These parameters were retrieved from the litterature86,87. Here also c, the maximum abundance reached by the target species was fixed to 1 and U2 varied between 0 and 1. Trapezoidal niches have been used frequently to model the spatial distribution of fish and marine mammals88,89.The trophic niche was modelled by a rectangular function on a daily basis. To the best of our knowledge, no information on the trophic niche is available. We modelled the trophic niche by fixing U3 to 1 when chlorophyll-a concentration was higher than 0.05 mg m−3 during a minimum period of 15 days and 0 otherwise (Supplementary Fig. 1). This minimum of chlorophyll was implemented as a proxy for suitable food, which has been shown to be important in the North Atlantic for cod recruitment and distribution6,33.There exists two ways to combine the different ecological dimensions of a niche: (i) use an additive or (ii) a multiplicative model82,90. We used a multiplicative model because when one dimension is associated to a nil abundance, the resulting abundance combining all dimensions is also nil in contrast to an additive model; therefore only one unsuitable environmental value may explain a nil abundance. All dimensions were associated to abundance values that varied between 0 and 190.Therefore, maximum dSSB, K, for a given environmental regime E was given by multiplying the three niches (thermal, bathymetric and trophic):$$K=mathop{prod }limits_{i=1}^{p}{U}_{i}$$ (9) where p = 3, the three dimensions of the niche.AnalysesMapping of maximum standardised SSBmdSSB is close to the “dynamic B0” approach; B0 is the SSB in the absence of fishing (generally expressed in tonnes)51 whereas mdSSB is the SSB in the absence of fishing standardised between 0 and 1 and assessed from the knowledge of the niche of the species. We first assessed mdSSB in the North-east Atlantic (around UK) at a spatial resolution of 0.25° latitude × 0.25° longitude on a daily basis from 1850 to 2019. For this analysis, FishClim was run on monthly COBE SST (1850–2019), mean bathymetry and a climatology of daily mass concentration of chlorophyll-a in seawater from the Glob Colour project (see Data section). We then calculated an annual average based on the main seasonal productive period around UK, i.e. from March to October90. Finally, we averaged all years to examine spatial patterns in mean mdSSB (Fig. 1a).Temporal changes in maximum standardised SSBWe assessed average long-term changes in mdSSB in the North Sea (51°N–62°N and 3°W–9.5°E); the annual average was calculated from March to October because this is a period of high production90 . We compared long-term changes in mdSSB with cod recruitment at age 1, a plankton index of larval cod survival based on the period March to October33, and ICES-based SSB35 for 1963-2019 (Fig. 1b–d).Correlation analyses with modelled maximum standardised SSBPearson correlations between long-term changes in mdSSB (average for the North Sea, 51°N–62°N and 3°W–9.5°E) and cod recruitment at age 1 in decimal logarithm35, a plankton index of larval cod survival in the North Sea33, and observed ICES SSB in decimal logarithm35 for the period 1963–2019 were calculated (Fig. 1b–d). The same analysis was performed between assessed fishing intensity α from our FishClim model and fishing effort F35 in the North Sea (Fig. 1e). The probability of significance of the coefficients of correlation was adjusted to correct for temporal autocorrelation91.Assessment of fishing intensity from ICES spawning stock biomassUsing North Sea ICES SSB, we applied Eq. (1) to assess fishing intensity α:$$alpha =1+rleft(1-frac{{X}_{t}}{{K}_{t}}right)-frac{{X}_{t+1}}{{X}_{t}}$$ (10) With Xt+1 and Xt the ICES dSSB (in decimal logarithm). Standardisation of ICES SSB, necessary for this analysis, was complicated because many different kinds of standardisation were achievable so long as X remained strictly above 0 (i.e. full cod extirpation, not observed so far35) and strictly below min(K) (i.e. all black curves always below all points of the blue curve were possible, Supplementary Fig. 3). Indeed, ICES SSB includes exploitation and environmental fluctuations whereas K (i.e. mdSSB) integrates only environmental forcing; the difference is mainly caused by the negative influence of fishing. We chose the black curve (ICES SSB) that maximised the correlation between α (fishing intensity in the FishClim model) and F (ICES fishing effort)35.Reconstruction of long-term changes in ICES spawning stock biomassThe estimation of α allowed us to reconstruct long-term changes in cod (ICES) dSSB and to examine the respective influence of fishing and CIEC by means of Eq. (1) (“Methods”) using four hypothetical scenarios (Fig. 1f). First, we fixed fishing intensity and considered exclusively environmental variations through its influence on dSSB. (i–ii) We assessed long-term changes in dSSB from long-term variation in observed mdSSB (called Kt in Eq. (1)) with a constant level of exploitation fixed to (i) minimum (upper blue curve, i.e. the lowest fishing intensity observed in 1963–2019) or (ii) maximum (lower blue curve, i.e. the highest fishing intensity observed in 1963–2019).Second, we fixed the environmental influence on dSSB and considered variations in fishing intensity. We estimated long-term changes in dSSB from long-term variation in estimated α with a constant mdSSB fixed to (iii) minimum (lower red curve, i.e. the lowest mdSSB observed in 1963–2019) or (iv) maximum (upper red curve, i.e. the highest mdSSB observed in 1963–2019). It was possible to compare long-term changes in reconstructed (ICES) dSSB (thick black curve in Fig. 1f) with these four hypothetical scenarios (Fig. 1f); note that these comparisons were not affected by the choice we made earlier on the standardisation of (ICES) SSB.Quantification of the respective influence of fishing and climate/environment on spawning stock biomassUsing the previous curves, we examined the respective influence of fishing and CIEC on reconstructed (ICES) dSSB (Fig. 2). First, the influence of fishing was investigated by estimating the residuals between reconstructed (ICES) dSSB based on long-term changes in mdSSB (i.e. Kt in Eq. (1)) and α (thick black curves in Fig. 1f) and modelled dSSB based on fluctuating fishing intensity α and invariant K (average of the two red curves in Fig. 1f). This calculation led to the red curve in Fig. 2b. Next, we performed the opposite procedure to examine the influence of CIEC on dSSB (i.e. invariant fishing intensity α based on the two blue curves in Fig. 1f). This calculation led to the blue curve in Fig. 2b.A cluster analysis, based on a matrix years × three time series with (i) long-term changes in reconstructed standardised (ICES) SSBs, (ii) fishing and (iii) CIEC, was performed to identify key periods (vertical dashed lines in Fig. 2). We standardised each variable between 0 and 1 and used an Euclidean distance to assess the year (1963–2019) × year (1963–2019) square matrix so that each variable contributed equally to each association coefficient. We used an agglomerative hierarchical clustering technique using average linkage, which was a good compromise between the two extreme single and complete clustering techniques92. In this paper, we were only interested in the timing between the different time periods (i.e. the groups of years) revealed by the cluster analysis (Fig. 2).We also calculated an index of fishing influence (ε, expressed in percentage) by means of two indicators γ and δ, which were slightly different to the ones we used above. The first one, γ, was modelled dSSB with fluctuating fishing intensity and a constant mdSSB based on the best suitable environment observed during 1963–2019 (only the upper red curve in Fig. 1f; fishing influence). The second one, δ, was modelled dSSB based on fluctuating environment and fishing intensity (black curve in Fig. 1f) on modelled dSSB based on a fluctuating environment but a constant fishing intensity fixed to the lowest value of the time series (only the upper blue curve in Fig. 1f; environmental influence). The index of fishing influence (ε, expressed in percentage) was calculated as follows:$$varepsilon =frac{100gamma }{gamma +delta }$$ (11) For each period of 1963–2019 identified by the cluster analysis, we quantified the influence of fishing (and therefore the environment) using a Jackknife procedure93,94. The resampling procedure recalculated ε by removing each time 1 year of the time period, which allowed us to provide a range of values (i.e. minimum and maximum) in addition to the average value (bar{varepsilon }) calculated for each interval, including the whole period (Fig. 2c).Long-term changes in modelled spawning stock biomass (1850–2019, 2020–2100 and 2020-2300)We modelled mdSSB (Kt in Eq. (1)) using outputs from four Earth System models (ESMs) based on two scenarios of SST/Chlorophyll changes (i.e. SSP245 and SSP585) for the period 1850–2100 (and for one scenario and one ESM until 2300; Fig. 3).For the period 1850–2019, we used daily SST/Chlorophyll changes from the four ESMs to estimate potential changes in mdSSB (thin dashed black curves in Fig. 3a). An average of mdSSB was also calculated (thick green curve in Fig. 3a).For the period 2020–2100, we showed all potential changes in mdSSB based on the four ESMs and both scenarios SSP245 (thin dashed blue curves in Fig. 3a) and SSP585 (thin dashed red curves). An average of mdSSB was also calculated for scenarios SSP245 (thick continuous blue curve) and SSP585 (thick continuous red curve). In addition, we assessed dSSB based on a constant standardised catch fixed to the average of 2008–2019, the last period identified by the cluster analysis (G5, i.e. (alpha X) = 0.03 in Eq. (1)), and the average values of all ESMs for SSP245 (thick dashed blue curve in Fig. 3a) and SSP585 (thick dashed red curve). This analysis was performed to show how a constant catch might alter long-term changes in mdSSB. When Xt (Eq. (1)) reached 0.1, the stock was considered as fully extirpated.Understanding how fishing and climate/environment interact now and in the futureWe modelled dSSB as a function of fishing intensity α and CIEC to show how fishing and the environment interact (Fig. 3b, c). We calculated dSSB for fishing intensity between α = 0 and α = 0.5 every step Ɵ = 0.001 and for mdSSB between K = 0 and K = 1 every step Ɵ = 0.001 to represent values of dSSB as a function of fishing and CIEC. We then superimposed reconstructed ICES dSSB (1963–2019) on the diagram for three periods: 1963–1985 (high SSB), 1986–1999 (pronounced reduction in SSB), and 2000–2019 (low SSB). Maximum standardised SSB for 2020–2100 (or 2300 exclusively for Scenario SSP 585 of IPSL ESM) assessed from four ESMs and scenarios SSP245 and SSP585 were also superimposed. Fishing intensity is unpredictable for 2020–2100 and so we arbitrarily fixed it constant between 0.08 and 0.17 in increments of 0.1 for display purposes, starting by ESMs based on scenario SSP 245 followed by scenario SSP 585 (Fig. 3b). When Xt (Eq. (1)) reached 0.1, the stock was considered as fully extirpated.We calculated an index of sensitivity of dSSB as a function of fishing intensity and CIEC. To do so, we first calculated sensitivity of dSSB to fishing intensity α. Index ζi was calculated at point i from dSSB X and fishing intensity α at i−1 and i+1 (see also Eq. (1)):$$begin{array}{cc}{zeta }_{i}=frac{left|{X}_{i+1}-{X}_{i-1}right|}{left|{alpha }_{i+1}-{alpha }_{i-1}right|} & {{{rm{with}}}},{{{rm{min }}}}(alpha )+{{uptheta }}le ile {{{rm{max }}}}(alpha )-{{uptheta }}end{array}$$ (12) With min(α) = 0, max(α) = 0.5 and Ɵ = 0.001.Similarly, we calculated sensitivity of dSSB to K. Index ηj was calculated at point j from dSSB X and mdSSB K at j−1 and j+1 (see also Eq. (1)):$$begin{array}{cc}{eta }_{j}=frac{left|{X}_{j+1}-{X}_{j-1}right|}{left|{K}_{j+1}-{K}_{j-1}right|} & {{{rm{with}}}},{{{rm{min }}}}left(Kright)+{{{rm{theta }}}}le {{j}}le {{{rm{max }}}}({{{rm{K}}}})-{{uptheta }}end{array}$$ (13) With min(K) = 0, max(K) = 1 and Ɵ = 0.001.Then, we summed the two indices to assess the joint sensitivity of dSSB to fishing intensity Z and mdSSB H:$${{{{bf{I}}}}}_{{{i}},{{j}}}={{{bf{Z}}}}({{{{rm{zeta }}}}}_{{{i}}})+{{{bf{H}}}}({eta }_{{{j}}})$$ (14) Matrix I was subsequently standardised between 0 and 1:$${{{{boldsymbol{I}}}}}^{{{{boldsymbol{* }}}}}=frac{{{{boldsymbol{I}}}}-min ({{{boldsymbol{I}}}})}{max left({{{boldsymbol{I}}}}right)-min ({{{boldsymbol{I}}}})}$$ (15) With I* the matrix of sensitivity of dSSB to fishing intensity and mdSSB standardised between 0 and 1 (Fig. 3c).Number of years needed for recovery after stock collapseWe investigated how the number of years needed for a stock to recover after stock collapse (i.e. dSSB=0.05 in Eq. (1); i.e. 10% of mdSSB) varied as a function of mdSSB (between 0 and 1 by increment of 0.001); this was only influenced by the environmental regime φt and population growth rate r. For this analysis, we fixed a target dSSB of 0.4 (vertical dashed green vertical line in Fig. 3d) and three different values of r: 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75. We simulated a hypothetical moratorium with a fishing intensity α = 0 in Eq. (1).Here, stock collapse was defined as dSSB ≤ 0.1 × mdSSB, i.e. when the dSSB reached less than 10% of the unfished biomass mdSSB. This threshold corresponds to values usually defined in the literature; e.g. Pinsky and colleagues95 defined a collapse when landings are below 10% the average of the five highest landings recorded for more than 2 years, Worm and colleagues69 defined stock collapse when the biomass becomes lower than 10% of the unfished biomass, Andersen96 when it is lower than 20% and Thorpe and De Oliveira67 when it is lower than 10–20%.Potential consequences of fisheries management and climate-induced environmental changesWe examined how fishing and CIEC may affect cod stocks and their exploitation around UK with a focus in the North Sea (Figs. 4, 5). For these analyses, we averaged long-term changes in modelled dSSB corresponding to each scenario (all thin dashed blue and thin red curves in Fig. 3a for SSP245 and 585, respectively). In these analyses, the stock was considered fully extirpated when Xt (Eq. (1)) reached 0.1.Year of cod extirpation for 2020–2100 We estimated year of cod extirpation from 2020 to 2100 in each geographical cell based on (i) a constant fishing intensity (α = 0.04) in time and space, and (ii) an adjusted fishing intensity using the concept of Mean Sustainable Yield (MSY). The choice of α = 0.04 did not alter our conclusions; a lower or a higher value delayed or speed cod extirpation in a predictable way, respectively. In fisheries, MSY is defined as the maximum catch (abundance or biomass) that can be removed from a population over an indefinite period with dX/dt = 0, with X for dSSB and t for time. Despite some criticisms about MSY66, the concept remains a key paradigm in fisheries management35,63. We used this concept to show that controlling fishing intensity delayed cod extirpation. From Eq. (1), we calculated fishing intensity, called αMSYt, so that X remained above XMSYt at all time t:$${alpha }_{{{{{rm{MSY}}}}t}}=rleft(1-frac{{X}_{{{{{rm{MSY}}}}t}}}{{K}_{t}}right)$$ (16) In this analysis, we fixed XMSY t = Kt/2. We assessed ({alpha }_{{{{{rm{MSY}}}}t}}) from Eq. (16) and then estimated dSSB from ({alpha }_{{{{{rm{MSY}}}}t}}) and Kt (based on averaged SSP245 and SSP585) by means of Eq. (1). Although results were displayed at the scale of the north-east Atlantic (around UK), we calculated the difference in year of cod extirpation between scenarios of warming (SSP245 and SSP585) and between scenarios of cod management (constant versus adjusted—MSY— fishing intensity). Differences were presented by means of histograms (Fig. 4). From each histogram, we calculated the median of the differences in year of cod extirpation E97. Pooled standardised catch by 2100 (2020–2100) In term of fishing exploitation, we assessed pooled standardised catch (i.e. pooled dSSB) in 2100 (2020–2100), again for two scenarios of CIEC (SSP245 and 585) and two scenarios of cod management (constant versus adjusted—MSY—fishing intensity; Fig. 5). We then calculated the percentage of reduction in pooled standardised catch caused by fishing or the intensity of warming. Finally, we assessed the median of the percentage of reduction in pooled standardised catch for the North Sea area (51°N–62°N and 3°W–9.5°E). The goal of this analysis was to demonstrate that controlling fishing intensity optimises cod exploitation. Statistics and reproducibilityAll statistical analyses can be reproduced from the equations provided in the text, the cited references or the data available in Supplementary Data.Reporting summaryFurther information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article. More

The numbers are heading in the wrong direction. If the world continues on its current track, it will fall well short of achieving almost all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the United Nations set to protect the environment and end poverty and inequality by 2030.The projected grade for:Eliminating hunger: F.Ensuring healthy lives for all: F.Protecting and sustainably using ocean resources: F.The trends were there before 2020, but then problems increased with the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine and the worsening effects of climate change. The world is in “a new uncertainty complex”, says economist Pedro Conceição, lead author of the United Nations Human Development Report.One measure of this is the drastic change in the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines educational outcomes, income and life expectancy into a single composite indicator. After 2019, the index has fallen for two successive years for the first time since its creation in 1990. “I don’t think this is a one-off, or a blip. I think this could be a new reality,” Conceição says.UN secretary-general António Guterres is worried. “We need an urgent rescue effort for the SDGs,” he wrote in the foreword to the latest progress report, published in July. Over the past year, Guterres and the heads of big UN agencies, such as the Statistics Division and the UN Development Programme, have been assessing what’s gone wrong and what needs to be done. They’re converging on the idea that it’s time to stop using gross domestic product (GDP) as the world’s main measure of prosperity, and to complement it with a dashboard of indicators, possibly ones linked to the SDGs. If this happens, it would be the biggest shift in how economies are measured since nations first started using GDP in 1953, almost 70 years ago1.
Get the Sustainable Development Goals back on track
Guterres’s is the latest in a crescendo of voices calling for GDP to be dropped as the world’s primary go-to indicator, and for a dashboard of metrics instead. In 2008, then French president Nicolas Sarkozy endorsed such a call from a team of economists, including Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz.And in August, the White House announced a 15-year plan to develop a new summary statistic that would show how changes to natural assets — the natural wealth on which economies depend — affect GDP. The idea, according to the project’s main architect, economist Eli Fenichel at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is to help society to determine whether today’s consumption is being accomplished without compromising the future opportunities that nature provides. “GDP only gives a partial and — for many common uses — an incomplete, picture of economic progress,” Fenichel says.The fact that Guterres has made this a priority, amid so many major crises, is a sign that “going beyond GDP has been picked up at the highest level”, says Stefan Schweinfest, the director of the UN Statistics Division, based in New York City.Grappling with growth GDP is a measure of economic activity that has ended up becoming the world’s main index for economic progress. By a commonly used definition, it is the numerical sum of countries’ consumer and government spending and their business investments, adding the value of exports minus imports. When governments and businesses talk, as they regularly do, about boosting ‘economic growth’, what they mean is boosting GDP.But GDP is more than a growth target. It is also the benchmark for how countries measure themselves against each other (see ‘Growth gaps’). The United States is the world’s largest economy, as measured by GDP. China, currently second, is on a path to overtake it.

Source: World Bank

GDP also matters greatly to politicians. When India leapfrogged the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth largest economy earlier this year, it made headline news. Last month, China reportedly delayed publication of its latest (and less-than-flattering) quarterly GDP figures so they would not appear during the Communist party’s national congress, at which Xi Jinping took a third term as president.“GDP is without question the superstar of indicators,” says Rutger Hoekstra, a researcher who studies sustainability metrics at Leiden University in the Netherlands and author of Replacing GDP by 2030.The problem with using GDP as a proxy for prosperity, says Hoekstra, is that it doesn’t reflect equally important indicators that have been heading in the opposite direction. Global GDP has increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution, but this has coincided with high levels of income and wealth inequality, according to data compiled by the economist Thomas Piketty at the World Inequality Lab in Paris2. This is not a coincidence. Back in the 1950s, when countries pivoted economies to maximizing GDP, they knew it would mean “making the labourer produce more than he is allowed to consume”, as Pakistan’s then chief economist Mahbub ul Haq graphically put it3. “It is well to recognize that economic growth is a brutal, sordid process.”What is more, to boost GDP, nations need to indulge in environmentally damaging behaviour. In his 2021 report, entitled Our Common Agenda, Guterres writes: “Absurdly, GDP rises when there is overfishing, cutting of forests or burning of fossil fuels. We are destroying nature, but we count it as an increase in wealth.”This tension is apparent when it comes to the SDGs. GDP growth is associated with several SDG targets; in fact SDG 8 is about boosting growth. But GDP growth “can also come at the expense of progress towards other goals”, such as climate and biodiversity action, says environmental economist Pushpam Kumar, who directs a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) project, called the Inclusive Wealth Report, to measure sustainability and inequality. The latest report will be published next month.The one-number problemThe present effort by Guterres and his colleagues is not the first time policymakers have tried to improve on GDP. In 1990, a group of economists led by ul Haq and Sen designed the HDI. They were motivated in part by frustration that their countries’ often impressive growth rates masked more-dismal quality-of-life data, such as life expectancy or education.More recently, environment ministers have found that GDP-boosting priorities have got in the way of their SDG efforts. Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, the former environment minister of Costa Rica, says he urged his finance and economics colleagues to take account of the impact of economic development on water, soils, forests and fish. But they were concerned about possible reductions in GDP calculations, says Rodríguez, now chief executive of the Global Environment Facility, based in Washington DC. Costa Rica didn’t want to be the first country to implement such a change only to possibly see itself slide down the growth rankings as a result.

Industrial production, such as the work at this automobile plant in Japan, goes into GDP calculations.Credit: Akio Kon/Bloomberg via Getty

China’s environmental policymakers were confronted with a similar response when, in 2006, they tried to implement a plan called Green GDP4. Local authorities were asked to measure the economic cost of pollution and environmental damage, and offset that against their economic growth targets. “They panicked and the project was shelved,” says Vic Li, a political economist at the Education University of Hong Kong, who has studied the episode. “Reducing GDP would have affected their performance reviews, which needed GDP to always increase,” he says.It’s been a similar story in Italy. In 2019, then research minister Lorenzo Fioramonti helped to establish an agency, Well-being Italy, attached to the prime minister’s office. It was intended to test economic policy decisions against sustainability targets. “It was an uphill battle because the various economic ministries did not see this as a priority,” says Fioramonti, now an economist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK.Revising the rulesSo, can the latest attempt to complement GDP succeed? Economists and national statisticians who help to determine GDP’s rules say it will be a struggle.Guterres and his colleagues are proposing to include 10–20 indicators alongside GDP. But that’s a tough sell because countries see a lot of value (not to mention ease of use) in relying on one number. And GDP’s great success is that countries produce their own figures, according to internationally agreed rules, which allow for cross-comparison over time. “It’s not a metric compiled by Washington DC, Beijing or London,” says Schweinfest.At the same time, GDP is not something that can just be turned on or off. In each country, tracking the data that goes into calculating GDP is an industrial-scale operation involving government data as well as surveys of households and businesses.
Are there limits to economic growth? It’s time to call time on a 50-year argument
China, Costa Rica and Italy’s experiences suggest that an environment-adjusted GDP might be accepted only if every country signs up to the concept at the same time. In theory, this could happen at the point when GDP’s rules — known as the System of National Accounts — are being reviewed, an event that takes place roughly once every 15 years.The next revision to the rules is under way and is due to be completed in 2025. The final decision will be made by the UN Statistical Commission, a group of chief statisticians from different nations, together with the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the network of the world’s wealthy countries.Because the UN oversees this process, Guterres has some influence over the questions that the review is asking. As part of their research, national statisticians are exploring how to measure well-being and sustainability, along with improving the way the digital economy is valued. Economists Diane Coyle and Annabel Manley, both at the University of Cambridge, say that technology and data companies, which make up seven out of the global top ten firms by stock-market capitalization, are probably undervalued in national accounts5.However, according to Peter van de Ven, a former OECD statistician who is the lead editor of the GDP revision effort, some aspects of digital-economy valuation, along with putting a value on the environment, are unlikely to make it into a revised GDP formula, and will instead be part of the report’s supplementary data tables. One of the reasons, he says, is that national statisticians have not agreed on a valuation methodology for the environment. Nor is there agreement on how to value digital services such as when people use search engines or social-media accounts that (like the environment) are not bought and sold for money.Yet other economists, including Fenichel, say that there are well-established methods that economists use to value both digital and environmental goods and services. One way involves asking people what they would be willing to pay to keep or use something that might otherwise be free, such as a forest or an Internet search engine. Another method involves asking what people would be willing to accept in exchange for losing something otherwise free. Management scientists Erik Brynjolfsson and Avinash Collis, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, did an experiment6 in which they computed the value of social media by paying people to give up using it.The value of natureEconomist Gretchen Daily at Stanford University in California says it’s not true that valuing the environment would make economies look smaller. It all depends on what you value. Daily is among the principal investigators of a project called Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) that has been trialled across China and is now set to be replicated in other countries. GEP adds together the value of different kinds of ecosystem goods and services, such as agricultural products, water, carbon sequestration and recreational sites. The researchers found7 that in the Chinese province of Qinghai, the region’s total GEP exceeded its GDP.Although past efforts to avoid using GDP have stalled, this time could be different. It’s likely, as van de Ven says, that national statisticians will not add nature (or indeed the value of social media and Internet search) to the GDP formula. But the pressure for change is greater than at any time in the past.GDP is like a technical standard, such as the voltage of household electricity or driving on the left, says Coyle. “So if you want to switch to the right, you need to align people on the same approach. Everyone needs to agree.” More

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Laboratory experimentsCulturingThe marine cyanobacterium Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101 was obtained from the National Center for Marine Algae and Microbiota (Maine, USA) and was grown in Aquil-tricho medium prepared with 0.22 µm-filtered and microwave-sterilized oligotrophic South China Sea surface water6. The medium was enriched with various concentrations of chelexed and filter-sterilized NaH2PO4 as where indicated, and filter-sterilized vitamins and trace metals buffered with 20 µM EDTA6. The cultures were unialgal, and although they were not axenic, sterile trace metal clean techniques were applied for culturing and experimental manipulations. T. erythraeum was pre-adapted to low P condition by semi-continuously culturing at 0.5 μM PO43− and at two pCO2 levels (400 and 750 µatm) for more than one year. To start the chemostat culture, three replicates per treatment were grown in 1-L Nalgene® magnetic culture vessels (Nalgene Nunc International, Rochester, NY, USA), in which the cultures were continuously mixed by bubbling with humidified and 0.22 µm-filtered CO2–air mixtures and stirring using a suspended magnetic stir bar. The reservoirs contained Aquil-tricho medium with 1.2 μM NaH2PO4, which was delivered to the culture vessels using a peristaltic pump (Masterflex® L/S®, USA) at the dilution rate of 0.2 d−1. In all experiments, cultures were grown at ;27 °C and ~80 μmol photons m−2 s−1 (14 h:10 h light–dark cycle) in an AL-41L4 algae chamber (Percival). The concentration of Chlorophyll a (Chla) was monitored daily in the middle of the photoperiod as an indicator of biomass. When the Chla concentration remained constant for more than one generation, the system was considered to have reached steady-state, and was maintained for at least another four generations prior to sampling for further analysis.Carbonate chemistry manipulationpCO2/pH of seawater media in the culture vessels and in the reservoir was controlled by continuously bubbling with humidified and 0.22 µm-filtered CO2-air mixtures generated by CO2 mixers (Ruihua Instrument & Equipment Ltd.). During the experimental period, the pHT (pH on the total scale) of media was monitored daily using a spectrophotometric method46. The dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) of media was analyzed by acidification and subsequent quantification of released CO2 with a CO2 analyzer (LI 7000, Apollo SciTech). Calculations of alkalinity and pCO2 were made using the CO2Sys program47, based on measurements of pHT and DIC, and the carbonate chemistry of the experiments are shown in Supplementary Table 1.Chla concentration and cell density and sizeChla concentration was measured daily following Hong et al.6. Briefly, T. erythraeum was filtered onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), followed by heating at 65 °C for 6 min in 90% (vol/vol) methanol. After extraction the filter was removed and cell debris were spun down via centrifugation (5 min at 20,000×g) before spectrophotometric analysis. Cell density and the average cell length and width were determined at regular intervals when the chemostat cultures reached steady-state using ImageJ software. Photographs of Trichodesmium were taken using a camera (Canon DS126281, Japan) connected with an inverted microscope (Olympus CKX41, Japan). Total number and length of filaments in 1 mL of culture were measured, and the cell number of ~20 filaments was counted. The average length of cells was obtained by dividing the total length of the 20 filaments by their total cell number. The cell density of the culture was then calculated by dividing the total length of filaments in 1 mL culture by the average cell length. The average cell width was determined by measuring the width of around 1000 cells in each treatment.Elemental compositionTo determine particulate organic C (POC) and N (PON), at the end of the chemostat culturing T. erythraeum cells were collected on pre-combusted 25 mm GF/F filters (Whatman) and stored at −80 °C. Prior to analysis, the filters were dried overnight at 60 °C, treated with fuming HCl for 6 h to remove all inorganic carbon, and dried overnight again at 60 °C. After being packed in tin cups, the samples were subsequently analyzed on a PerkinElmer Series II CHNS/O Analyzer 2400.Particulate organic P (POP) was measured following Solorzano et al.48. Cells were filtered on pre-combusted 25 mm GF/F filters and rinsed twice with 2 mL of 0.17 M Na2SO4. The filters were then placed in combusted glass bottles with the addition of 2 mL of 0.017 M MgSO4, and subsequently evaporated to dryness at 95 °C and baked at 450 °C for 2 h. After cooling, 5 mL of 0.2 M HCl was added to each bottle. The bottle was then tightly capped and heated at 80 °C for 30 min, after which 5 mL Milli-Q H2O was added. Dissolved phosphate from the digested POP sample was measured colorimetrically following the standard phosphomolybdenum blue method.C uptake and N2 fixation ratesRates of short-term C uptake were determined at the end of the chemostat culturing. 100 µM NaH14CO3 (PerkinElmer) was added to 50 mL of cultures in the middle of the photoperiod, which was then incubated for 20 min under the growth conditions. After incubation, the samples were collected onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), which were then washed with 0.22 µm-filtered oligotrophic seawater and placed on the bottom of scintillation vials. The filters were acidified to remove inorganic C by adding 500 µL of 2% HCl. The radioactivity was determined using a Tri-Carb 2800TR Liquid Scintillation Analyzer (PerkinElmer). Rates of N2 fixation (nitrogenase activity) were measured in the middle of the photoperiod for 2 h by the acetylene reduction assay49, using a ratio of 4:1 to convert ethylene production to N2 fixation.Soluble reactive phosphate (SRP) analysisWhen the chemostat cultures reached a steady-state, SRP concentrations in the culture vessels were measured at regular intervals, using the classic phosphomolybdenum blue (PMB) method with an additional step to enrich PMB on an Oasis HLB cartridge50. Briefly, 100 mL of GF/F filtered medium sample was fortified with 2 mL of ascorbic acid (100 g L−1) and 2 mL of mixed reagent (MR, the mixture of 100 mL of 130 g L−1 ammonium molybdate tetrahydrate, 100 mL of 3.5 g L−1 potassium antimony tartrate, and 300 mL of 1:1 diluted H2SO4), and then mixed completely. After standing at room temperature for 5 min, the solution was loaded onto a preconditioned Oasis HLB cartridge (3 cm3/60 mg, P/N: WAT094226, Waters Corp.) via a peristaltic pump, and then 1 mL eluent solution (0.2 M NaOH) was added to elute the sample into a cuvette, to which 0.06 mL of MR and 0.03 mL of ascorbic acid solution was added to fully develop PMB. Finally, the absorbance of PMB was measured at 700 nm using a spectrophotometer.Alkaline phosphatase (AP) activityAP activities were measured in the middle of the photoperiod using p-nitrophenylphosphate (pNPP) as a substrate51. Briefly, 5 mL of culture was incubated with 250 μL of 10 mM pNPP, 675 μL of Tris-glycine buffer (50 mM, pH 8.5) and 67.5 μL of 1 mM MgCl2 for 2 h under growth conditions. The absorbance of formed p-nitrophenol (pNP) was measured at 410 nm using a spectrophotometer.PolyP analysisAt the end of the chemostat culturing, T. erythraeum cells were filtered in the middle of the photoperiod onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), flash frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at −80 °C until analysis. PolyP was quantified fluorometrically following Martin and Van Mooy22 and Martin et al.23. Briefly, samples were re-suspended in 1 mL Tris buffer (pH 7.0), sonicated for 30 s, immersed in boiling water for 5 min, sonicated for another 30 s, and then digested by 10 U DNase (Takara), RNase (2.5 U RNase A + 100 U RNase T1) (Invitrogen) and 20 μl of 20 mg mL−1 proteinase K at 37 °C for 30 min. After centrifugation for 5 min at 14,000×g, the supernatant was diluted with Tris buffer according to the range of standards curve, stained with 60 μL of 100 μM 4, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) per 500 μL of samples, incubated for 7 min and then vortexed. The samples were then loaded onto a black 96-well plate and the absorption of fluorescence at an excitation wavelength of 415 nm and emission wavelength of 550 nm was measured using a PerkinElmer EnSpire® Multimode Plate Reader. PolyP standard (sodium phosphate glass Type 45) was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. This method gives a relative measure of polyP concentration23 that is expressed as femto-equivalents of the standard per cell (feq cell−1).Cellular ATP measurementCellular ATP contents were determined when the chemostat cultures reached a steady state. T. erythraeum cells were collected in the middle of the photoperiod using an ATP Assay Kit (Beyotime Biotechnology, Shanghai, China) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Briefly, the sample was lysed and centrifuged, and the supernatant (100 μL) was mixed with ATP detection working reagent (100 μL) and loaded onto a black 96-well plate. The luminescence was measured using a PerkinElmer EnSpire® Multimode Plate Reader.Intracellular metabolites measurementsNAD(H), NADP(H), and Glu were measured at the end of the chemostat culturing, using the liquid chromatography-tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) method modified from Luo et al.52. Briefly, T. erythraeum cells were gently filtered at the middle of photoperiod onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), rapidly suspended in −80 °C precooled methanol-water (60%, v/v) mixture. After being kept in −80 °C freezer for 30 min, the sample was sonicated for 30 s, centrifuged at 12,000×g and 4 °C for 5 min, and the supernatant was filtered through a 0.2 μm filter (Jinteng®, China) and stored at −80 °C for further LC–MS/MS analysis.A 2.0 × 50 mm Phenomenex® Gemini 5u C18 110 Å column (particle size 5.2 µm, Phenomenex, USA) was used for the analysis. The mobile phases consisted of two solvents: mobile phase A (10 mM tributylamine aqueous solution, pH 4.95 with 15 mM acetic acid) and mobile phase B (100% methanol), which were delivered using an Agilent 1290 UPLC binary pump (Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, CA, USA) at a flow rate of 200 µL min−1, with a linear gradient program implemented as follows: hold isocratic at 0% B (0–2 min); linear gradient from 0% to 85% B (2–28 min); hold isocratic at 0% B (28–34 min). The effluent from the LC column was delivered to an Agilent 6490 triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer, equipped with an electrospray ionization source operating in negative-ion mode. NAD, NADH, NADP, NADPH, and Glu were monitored in the multiple reaction monitoring modes with the transition events at m/z 662.3  > 540, 664.3  > 79, 742  > 620, 744  > 79, and 147  > 84, respectively.RNA extraction, library preparation, and sequencingAt the end of the chemostat culturing, T. erythraeum was collected in the middle of the photoperiod by filtering onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), flash frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C until extraction. Total RNA was extracted using TRIzol® Reagent (Invitrogen) combined with a physical cell disruption approach by glass beads according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Genomic DNA was removed thoroughly by treating it with RNAase-free DNase I (Takara, Japan). Ribosomal RNA was removed from a total amount of 3 µg RNA using Ribo-Zero rRNA Removal kit (Illumina, USA). Subsequently, cDNA libraries were generated according to the manufacturer’s protocol of NEBNext® UltraTM Directional RNA Library Prep Kit for Illumina® (NEB, USA). The quality of the library was assessed on the Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100 system (Agilent Technologies, CA, USA). Libraries were sequenced on an Illumina Hiseq 2500 platform, yielding 136-bp paired-end reads.RNA-Seq bioinformaticsClean reads were obtained from raw data by removing reads containing adapter, ploy-N and low-quality read. Qualified sequences were mapped to the Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101 genome (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_008312.1) by using Bowtie2-2.2.353. Differential expression analysis for high/low pCO2 with P limitation was performed using the DESeq2 R package54. The resulting p-values were adjusted using Benjamini and Hochberg’s approach for controlling the false discovery rate. Genes with an adjusted p-value  More

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