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    Ecological dependencies make remote reef fish communities most vulnerable to coral loss

    Fish distributionWe rasterized a detailed reef distribution vector map35 at 5 × 5 latitude/longitude degrees (by considering as reef area each cell in the raster intersecting a polygon in the original shapefile). We collected all the occurrences of fish species intersecting the rasterized reef area from both the Ocean Biogeographic Information System36 and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility37. We used taxonomic and biogeographical (i.e., latitudinal/longitudinal extremes for a given species) information from FishBase38 to exclude potential incorrect occurrences (i.e., all the records falling outside the known species ranges). We also restricted the list to all the species for which FishBase provided relevant ecological information (as these were needed to evaluate prey-predator species interactions and identify indirect links between fish species and coral, see below). The filtered list comprises 9143 fish species.For these species, we used occurrence data to generate species ranges. For this, we used the α-hull procedure39, but instead of pre-selecting an α parameter and using it for all species, we developed a procedure to obtain conservative species ranges while including most of the known occurrences. First, we selected a very small α (0.001), to obtain a hull including most of the occurrences. Then, we progressively incremented α in small amounts (0.005) by computing, for each increment, the ratio between the relative reduction in the resulting hull area (in respect to the previous hull), and the relative reduction of occurrences included in the hull (in respect to the total number of available occurrences for the target species). We stopped increasing α when the ratio became 0.97.The random forest predictor was used to assess the probability of trophic interaction between a large list of potential interactions generated by combining all fish species from our reef fish occurrence dataset known to rely mainly or exclusively on fish for their survival (i.e. “true piscivores”, FishBase trophic level  > 3.5), with all the fish in the dataset. The full list included 31,768,450 potential interactions, that we reduced to 6,721,450 interactions by keeping only the interacting pairs identified by the random forest classifier with a probability ≥0.9.(3) If the ecological dependency between two species is actually manifested then the two species must obviously co-occur at some locations, and vice-versa, co-occurrence is a necessary pre-requisite for an ecological dependency. Following this logic, we took a final, additional step to further filter and improve the fish → fish interaction list. In particular, we quantified the tendency for species to co-occur in the same locality as one potential proxy layer for species interactions, complementary to our other approaches. There are various factors that can affect the co-occurrence of two species. In a simplification, this can emerge from stochasticity, shared environmental requirements, shared evolutionary history, and ecological dependencies. We attempted to disentangle the effect of the last factor from the first three.For each target species pair, we computed overlap in distribution as the raw number of reef localities where both target species were found. Then, we compared this number with the null expectation obtained by randomizing the distribution of species occurrences across reef localities. We designed a null model accounting for randomness, species niche and biogeographical history, and hence randomizing the occurrence of species only within areas where they could have possibly occurred according to environmental conditions and biogeographical factors (e.g., in the absence of hard or soft barriers). To implement the null model, we first excluded from the list of potential localities all the areas outside the biogeographical regions where the target species had been recorded, with regions identified according to Spalding et al.49. Then, within the remaining areas, we identified all the reef localities with climate envelopes favourable to target species survival. For this, we identified the min and max of major environmental drivers (mean annual surface temperature, salinity, pH) where the target species occurred, and then we identified all the localities with conditions not exceeding these limits. We generated, for each pairwise species comparison, one thousand randomized sets of species occurrences by rearranging randomly species occurrence within all suitable localities. We quantified co-occurrence between the species pair in each random scenario. Finally, we compared the observed co-occurrence with the random co-occurrences, computing a p-value as the fraction of null models with co-occurrence identical or higher than the observed one. We kept only the pairs with a p-value  More

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    Using a climate attribution statistic to inform judgments about changing fisheries sustainability

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    Multi-centennial phase-locking between reproduction of a South American conifer and large-scale drivers of climate

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    Strategic Forest Reserves can protect biodiversity in the western United States and mitigate climate change

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    Comparative quantification of local climate regulation by green and blue urban areas in cities across Europe

    Climate change and the urban heat island effect threaten the sustainability of rapidly growing urban settlements and urban population worldwide1. Such threats may be ameliorated by the ecosystem service of local climate regulation provided by green–blue urban areas (natural, restored, or (re)constructed ecosystems, such as forested land, wetlands, parks)2,3,4. The spatiotemporal relationships existing between natural ecosystems and human societies form the basis of the ecosystem service framework, used to represent such benefits from nature to human well-being5,6. Areas of ecosystem service provision (nature contribution of some supply) and ecosystem service use (human beneficiaries with some ecosystem service demand) in a landscape are then often connected by some form of carrier flow, which can be natural (air and water movement) or depend on human-made infrastructure (e.g., pipelines for water, road network and vehicles for human movement)7,8. Additionally, ecosystem service relevance is scale-dependent, e.g., with carbon sequestration being globally relevant, while recreational areas provide mostly local and regional benefits9,10,11. Over each scale of relevance, it is essential to distinguish the supply and demand sides of spatial ecosystem services relationships2, and the degree to which potential supply (left, Fig. 1) can actually reach and fulfill some actual demand (right, Fig. 1). This may be referred to as the degree of realization of ecosystem service supply and demand12. Conceptually, we define a potential as the hypothetical maximum capacity for a service (supply) or need (demand). In contrast, a realized service quantifies the actual ecosystem service, after consideration of proper spatial flow connections between natural ecosystems and humans. For example, for a city, only part of its total potential ecosystem service demand (Pd) may be actually fulfilled (referred to as the realized ecosystem service demand, Rd, right in Fig. 1) by only part (the realized supply part, Rs, left in Fig. 1) of the city’s total potential ecosystem service supply (Ps). Thus, Rd measures the part of the human demand (for the ecosystem service) actually fulfilled, while Rd quantify the part of the supply used to provide the ecosystem service. The Methods section describes and discusses in further detail this and other term definitions used in the analysis, the relationships between terms, and the calculation methods employed to quantify them.Figure 1Spatial flow dependence of ecosystem services and studied city locations. Schematic of potential and realized supply and demand of flow-dependent ecosystem service (for explanation, see “Methods”).Full size imageIn practice, implementing the concept of ecosystem services into urban landscape management and decision making is still problematic5, with one reason being the challenge to link spatially disaggregated areas of service provision with the human beneficiaries13. In addition, considerable ambiguity still remains, conceptually and in practice, regarding the distinction and quantification of potential and realized ecosystem services supply and demand14. For example, without consideration of the spatial relationship between supply and demand (implicitly or explicitly), it becomes difficult to determine or quantify, in practice, if an actual ecosystem service exists. To contribute to its resolution, we here investigate the degree of supply and demand realization for the urban ecosystem service of local climate regulation using comparative quantitative indicators in and across 660 cities of different sizes and in different parts of Europe (Fig. 2).Figure 2Studied city locations. Map of the European study region and locations of the cities studied. See Supplementary Table 1 for further city data.Full size imageThe potential of green–blue urban areas for cooling cities is generally well established, and has been studied using direct observations15,16, remote sensing17 or modelling based approaches18,19. The regulation of local urban air temperatures by such areas can increase thermal comfort and decrease health risks related to urban heat island (UHI) effects20,21 for urban populations. The UHI effects relate to often-observed higher ambient air temperatures in urban environments compared to their close surroundings20,21. The spatial extents of cities in this study are then considered according to their respective administrative unit definitions.The investigation focuses on urban realization of this ecosystem service because the proportion of the global human population living in urban areas is steadily rising22, and cities are critical for both climate change mitigation and societal adaptation to warming23,24. For adaptation, cities need to handle exacerbated urban warming by UHI effects and provide livable environments for their residents while avoiding detrimental consequences from competing development interests25,26. The UHI effects emphasize the importance of local climate regulation as an essential urban ecosystem service, the actual realization of which depends on city function and form, with the latter including the spatial distribution of green–blue urban areas, as well as temporal changes in this by growing urbanization. The degree to which such growth leads to replacement of moist soils and vegetative cover with paved and impervious surfaces also affects urban surface energy and radiation balances27, and associated land surface temperatures at local human scale, although the relationship with air temperature is complex27. For example the proportion of vegetation in a particular area will regulate the resulting ratio of sensitive to latent heat flux (known as Bowen ratio), which will in turn affect properties of the urban climate27.In reality, a city’s climate consists of a variety of smaller-scale microclimates, which can be modified and leveraged through deliberate design20. This emphasizes the importance of good city planning28, including for conservation, restoration, and construction of new urban green–blue areas29,30. Such areas can provide various services to urban populations, e.g., urban flood mitigation12 and more general health31 and well-being32 benefits, including cooling required to mitigate UHI effects. The latter can be achieved, e.g., by enhanced latent heat flux associated with higher evapotranspiration from green areas and evaporation from blue areas. Through the flow of air and its lateral heat advection, green–blue urban areas can also cool surrounding built parts of the city that would commonly have a demand for such ecosystem service of local climate regulation2. How to measure and predictively quantify the zones of influence of such air cooling by green–blue areas is still a challenging research question, but such zones are reported to be in the range of several hundred meters29,33,34.The aim of the indicators developed and used in this study is to quantify actual realized urban ecosystem service supply in terms of its fulfillment of some actual demand for that ecosystem service of the urban human population. Over each city, such realization and associated indicator values depend both on local conditions (such as natural land-cover areas that can supply the considered ecosystem service) and overall urban form and spatial configuration of the natural and built areas in the urban landscape. At larger scales spanned by multiple cities (such as those over Europe studied in this paper, Fig. 2), the quantitative indicators can be used to detect main ecosystem service realization patterns, similarities and differences among cities. This is done by quantifying indicator statistics across the cities, and assessing ecosystem service realization patterns in terms of how these statistics depend on city characteristics, or associated country or sub-region characteristics, such as population density or socio-economic measures like Human Development Index (HDI) and GDP per capita.A few studies have evaluated spatial dependencies of ecosystem services35,36 and mostly focused on multiple services in a specific study area. Our comparative multi-city study aims instead at revealing possible overarching statistical patterns of the spatially dependent ecosystem service of local climate regulation, and its realization in and across European urban systems. While this urban ecosystem service is important per se, the dependence of its realization on spatial proximity to green–blue areas may also provide useful guidance for further study of other urban ecosystem services that depend on the spatial distribution of green–blue areas and their proximity to human needs within cities2,12,32.Previous multi-city explorations of urban socio-economic growth and human-made infrastructure have revealed and quantified various statistical cross-city patterns37,38,39. Our study hypothesizes that such patterns may also emerge in the cross-city statistics of ecosystem service realization indicators related to green–blue city areas and their provision to urban populations. Identification of such quantitative ecosystem service indicator patterns can increase fundamental understanding of urban ecosystem service conditions, as well as projection capabilities for changes in these conditions under city growth, e.g., in terms of population density, HDI, and GDP per capita.To explore and test the main study hypothesis, we compile and synthesize for all 660 European cities (Fig. 2) high-resolution datasets for city morphology (e.g., land cover) and bio-physical characteristics (e.g. degree of imperviousness, vegetation type and vegetation density), based on previous study reports of the relevance of these parameters for the ecosystem service of local climate regulation2,12, along with city-scale measures of human population, city area, and resulting population density ratio (Supplementary Table 1). Using these data, we evaluate and map total potential ecosystem service supply and demand in each city (Figs. 1, 2, Supplementary Figures 1–3, Methods), and further apply a model of radially decaying ecosystem service supply and demand realization at 20 m resolution (Supplementary Figure 2–3, Methods) to also account for the spatial influence reach of local climate regulation from each location in the city. Furthermore, for comparative multi-city analysis, we quantify a set of directly comparable ecosystem service realization indicators for each city (explained further below) and their resulting statistics across all 660 cities over Europe, and comparatively for cities in different European countries and sub-regions.Indicator definitions and calculationsFor each of the 660 cities, we consider and calculate two basic metrics of urban ecosystem service realization: the ratio of realized to potential ecosystem service supply (Rs/Ps), and the ratio of realized to potential ecosystem service demand (Rd/Pd). For each discretized city pixel within a city, we first calculate its local net potential ecosystem service supply (Ps) or demand (Pd) directly from the urban morphology and bio-physical data (Supplementary Figure 1). For each net supply pixel, we further calculate (as illustrated bottom right in Supplementary Figure 2) that pixel’s ecosystem service realized supply contributions to the surrounding net demand pixels within its spatial influence radius (top, Supplementary Figure 2). Analogously, for each net demand pixel, we calculate the contributions to fulfilling (realizing) its ecosystem service demand from the surrounding net supply pixels that have that net demand pixel within their spatial influence radius. For each pixel of any type, we thus calculate its realized ecosystem service supply Rs or demand Rd in relation to its potential net local supply Ps or demand Pd, respectively (Supplementary Figure 2; see also Supplementary Figure 3 and Supplementary Information for further calculation and mapping details). We further calculate comparative indicators of city-average relative realized ecosystem service supply and demand, Rs/Ps and Rd/Pd, respectively, from the sums of local Rs, Rd, Ps and Pd over all pixels in the city. The city-average supply indicator Rs/Ps thus quantifies the average degree of realized (actually used) ecosystem service supply from all green–blue areas over the whole city (left in Fig. 1). Analogously, the city-average demand indicator Rd/Pd quantifies the average degree of realized (actually fulfilled) ecosystem service demand over each city (right in Fig. 1). For further cross-city comparison, we also calculate indicators for how large area fraction of total city area has a relatively high degree of ecosystem service supply and demand realization, respectively. Local Rs/Ps ≥ 0.5 and Rd/Pd ≥ 0.5 are then selected as illustrative thresholds for such relatively high degree of ecosystem service supply and demand realization, respectively, with the area fractions calculated from the number of pixels with Rs/Ps ≥ 0.5 or Rd/Pd ≥ 0.5 relative to the total number of pixels in each city.Based on the power-law relationships with population density results found for both previous city-average and city-fraction indicators of ecosystem service realization, we also have an opportunity to project indicator values for future scenarios of changed population density, as$$r_{i} = frac{Ri}{{Pi}} = Ai cdot left( {PD} right)^{beta i} le 1$$
    (1)
    where index i = d represents demand and i = s supply. Furthermore, for city-average indicators, Ri and Pi represent realized and potential ecosystem service, respectively, while for area-fraction indicators, they represent city area with high degree of ecosystem service realization (≥ 0.5) and total city area, respectively. The constraint of (r_{i} le 1) is due to the upper limit of Ri ≤ Pi for both indicator types, with Ai the scale factor and βi the exponent of a power law relationship ri with population density (denoted PD). Based on Eq. (1), a relative measure of ecosystem service realization effectiveness can be estimated from the demand fulfillment ((r_{d})) relative to the supply use ((r_{s})), as:$$Effectiveness = frac{{r_{d} }}{{r_{s} }} = frac{{Ad cdot left( {PD} right)^{beta d} }}{{As cdot left( {PD} right)^{beta s} }} = frac{Ad}{{As}}PD^{{left( {beta d – beta s} right)}}$$
    (2a)
    with$$r_{d} = Ad cdot left( {PD} right)^{beta d} quad ifquad r_{d} le 1,,,,,r_{d} = 1quad otherwise$$
    (2b)
    $$r_{s} = As cdot left( {PD} right)^{beta s} quad if,r_{s} le 1,,,,r_{s} = 1quad otherwise.$$
    (2c) More

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    Mixoplankton interferences in dilution grazing experiments

    Our results show that Chl a alone is not an adequate proxy for prey growth rates in dilution grazing experiments when mixoplankton are present5,10. Chlorophyll is, in any case, a poor proxy for phototrophic plankton biomass31 because of inter-species variations, and also for the photoacclimation abilities of some species (for which very significant changes can occur within a few hours). The problem extends to the involvement of mixoplanktonic prey and grazers. Nevertheless, even very recent studies continue to rely on this parameter for quantifications of grazing despite acknowledging the dominance, both in biomass and abundance, of mixoplanktonic predators in their system30. Moreover, the detailed analysis of the species-specific dynamics revealed that different prey species are consumed at very different rates. In our experiments, and contrary to expectations (see32,33, and Fig. S1 in the Supplementary Information), C. weissflogii was only actively ingested in the ciliate experiment and, according to the results from the control bottles (Table 2), not by M. rubrum (see Fig. 4 and Fig. S1a).Certainly, it is not the first time that a negative selection against diatoms has been seen; for example, Burkill et al.34 noticed that diatoms were less grazed by protist grazers than other phytoplankton species, as assessed by a dilution technique paired with High-Performance Liquid Chromatography for pigment analysis. Using the same method, Suzuki et al.35 reported that diatoms became the dominant phytoplankton group, which suggests that other groups were preferentially fed upon. Calbet et al.36, in the Arctic, also found only occasional grazing over the local diatoms. In our study, diatoms were not only not consumed, but the presence of dinoflagellates appeared to contribute to their growth (Fig. 4), this relationship being partly dependent on the concentration of the predator (see Fig. 2c, d). This result could be a direct consequence of assimilation and use of compounds (e.g.,37,38) released by microplankton such as ammonium (e.g.,39,40) and urea (e.g.,41), which were not supplied in the growth medium, but which would have supported prey growth. Alternatively, this unexpected outcome may have been a consequence of the selective ingestion of R. salina by the two predators, relieving the competition for nutrients and light and resulting in a higher growth rate of the diatom in the presence of the predators. We cannot rule out the fact that diatoms sink faster than flagellates which, as the bottles were not mixed during most of the incubation period (although gently mixed at every sampling point), may have also involuntarily decreased ingestion rates on C. weissflogii. Still, one C. weissflogii cell contains, on average, ca. 2.5 times more Chl a than one R. salina cell (initial value excluded, see Table 3). Taken together with the preference for R. salina it is not surprising that the proportion of total Chl a represented by the diatoms increased over time, in particular in the L/D treatment (Figs. 6a, c and 7a, c).Table 3 Chl a content (pg Chl a cell−1) of the target species at each sampling point as calculated from the control bottles.Full size tableAnother factor clearly highlighted by our experiments, is that protozooplankton themselves contribute a significant portion of the total chlorophyll of the system (due to ingested Chl a), in particular at the beginning of the incubation (see Figs. 6 and 7); this being invariably ignored in a traditional dilution experiment. The high Chl a detected inside the protozooplanktonic grazers at the beginning of the incubations could suggest that the system was initially not in equilibrium, and that this was the result of superfluous feeding (e.g.,42). This would, nevertheless, be surprising since we required ca. 1 h to collect the initial samples (t = 0 h) after joining all the organisms together (see the section “Dilution grazing experiments” in the “Methods” section); previous studies, like the one on G. dominans and Oxyrrhis marina by Calbet et al.42, showed that the hunger response and consequent vacuole replenishment occurred in ca. 100 min for very high prey concentrations and it is expected to decrease at lower prey concentrations as the ones used in our study. Therefore, even if one assumes that the first 4 h of incubation are a result of superfluous feeding, after 24 h, the “estimated”, “observed”, and “from dilution slope” grazing estimates are not significantly different to those displayed in Fig. 5 (P  > 0.05 in all instances) and, therefore, we can assume that the hunger response was likely irrelevant (e.g.,43) and did not mask our results. In any case, as stated before, an actual field grazing dilution experiment also suffers from similar problems, because grazers and prey are suddenly diluted and not pre-adapted to distinct food concentrations. Nevertheless, this is not novel information, since Chl a and its degradation products have been found inside several protozooplankton species from different phylogenetic groups immediately after feeding44 and even after some days without food45. An increase in intracellular Chl a concentrations immediately after feeding has also been found in mixoplankton46,47, on which this increase is derived both from ingested prey as well as from new synthesis of their own Chl a. Additionally, several experiments with Live Fluorescently Labelled Algae (LFLA) show that predators (irrespective of their trophic mode) seem to maximise the concentration of intracellular prey shortly after the initiation of the incubation (e.g.,48; Ferreira et al., submitted). Indeed, some authors have even been able to measure photosynthesis in protozooplankton, like the ciliates Mesodinium pulex49 and Strombidinopsis sp.50.The fact that Chl a is a poor indicator of phytoplankton biomass and the inherent consequences discussed so far can be solved by the quantification of the prey community abundance (e.g.,51) by microscopy or by the use of signature pigments for each major phytoplankton group. The latter method, however, is not as thorough as the former, since rare are the cases where one pigment is exclusively associated with a single group of organisms (see52 and references therein). In any case, any pigment-based proxy is subject to the same problems, as identified by Kruskopf & Flynn31. Irrespective of the quantification method, it has been made evident that the different algae are consumed at different rates (e.g., pigments10,34,35; microscopy5,36).Prey selection in protistan grazers is a common feature (e.g.,23,26,27,28). Given the diversity of grazers in natural communities and the array of preferred prey that each particular species possesses, it is logical to think that dilution experiments will capture the net community response properly. Likewise, grazers interact with each other through toxins, competition, and intraguild predation among other factors. An example of intraguild predation could be the observed on K. armiger by G. dominans (see Figs. 2f and 4 and Table 1), which caused an average loss of ca. 18.72 pg of K. armiger carbon per G. dominans per hour in the D treatment. Interestingly, in the same treatment, a slight negative effect of K. armiger on its predator G. dominans can also be deduced (i.e., positive g, Table 1), resulting in an average loss of ca. 0.33 pg G. dominans carbon per K. armiger per hour. This could be a consequence of algal toxins, since K. armiger is a known producer of karmitoxin22, whose presence may have negative effects even on metazoan grazers21. Regarding ciliates, none of the species used is a known producer of toxic compounds, which suggests that the average loss of ca. 1.25 pg M. rubrum carbon per hour in the D treatment was due to S. arenicola predation. Altogether, it seems clear from our data that intraguild predation cannot be ignored when analysing dilution experiments (Fig. 4). Furthermore, our results clearly show that single functional responses cannot be used to extrapolate community grazing impacts, as evidenced by the differences in estimated and measured ingestion rates based on the disappearance of prey in combined grazers experiments (Fig. 5). Nevertheless, this is a relatively common procedure (e.g.,53 and references therein). Often in modelling approaches, individual predator’s functional responses have been used to extrapolate prey selectivity and community grazing responses27; in reality complex prey selectivity functions are required to satisfactorily describe prey selectivity and inter-prey allelopathic interactions54.It is, however, also evident that the measured ingestion rates in combined grazers experiments were not the same as those calculated from the slope of the dilution grazing experiment. This raises the question of why was that the case. It is well known that phytoplankton cultures, when extremely diluted, show a lag phase of different duration55 which has been attributed to the net leakage of metabolites56. Assuming that the duration of the lag phase will be dependent on the level of dilution, it seems reasonable to deduce that after ca. 24 h the instantaneous growth rates (µ) in the most diluted treatments will be lower than that of the undiluted treatments. This has consequences, not only for the estimated prey growth rates but also for the whole assessment of the grazing rate, due to the flattening of the regression line (i.e., the decrease in the computed growth rate). This artefact may be more evident in cultures acclimated to very particular conditions (as the laboratory cultures used in this study) than in nature.Another important finding of our research is the importance of light on the correct expression of the feeding activity by both mixoplankton and protozooplankton. We noticed that irrespective of the light conditions, all species exhibited a diurnal feeding rhythm (R. salina panels in Figs. 2 and 3), which is in accordance with earlier observations on protists (e.g.,29,57,58). The presence of light typically increased the ingestion rates. Additionally, the ingestion rates differed during the night period between L/D and D treatments, which implies that receiving light during the day is also vital in modulating the night behaviour of protoozoo- and mixoplankton. In particular, mixoplankton grazing is usually affected by light conditions, typically increasing (e.g.,32,59), but also sometimes decreasing(e.g.,60) in the presence of light. Different irradiance levels can also affect the magnitude of ingestion rates both in protozoo- and mixoplankton (see61 and references therein).For those reasons, we hoped for a rather consistent pattern among our protists that would help us discriminate mixoplankton in dilution grazing experiments. As a matter of fact, based on the results from Arias et al.29, we expected that in the dinoflagellate experiment, the D treatment would have inhibited only the grazing of K. armiger, enabling a simple discrimination between trophic modes. The reality did not meet the expectations since the day and night-time carbon-specific ingestion rates (as assessed using the control bottles, Table 2) of K. armiger were respectively higher and equal than those of G. dominans. Conversely, in the ciliate experiment, protozooplankton were the major grazers in our incubations regardless of the day period and light conditions. This response was not as straightforward as one would expect it to be because M. rubrum has been recently suggested to be a species complex containing at least 7 different species (62 and references therein), which hinders any possible conjecture on their grazing impact. Indeed, the uneven responses found between and within trophic modes precluded such optimistic hypothetical procedure.The D treatment in the present paper illustrated the importance of mimicking natural light conditions, a factor also addressed in the original description of the technique by Landry and Hassett1. It is crucial for the whole interpretation of the dilution technique that incubations should be conducted in similar light (and temperature) conditions as the natural ones to allow for the continued growth of the phototrophic prey. However, here we want to stress another aspect of the incubations: should they start during the day or the night? Considering our (and previous) results on diel feeding rhythms, and on the contribution of each species to the total Chl a pool, it is clear that different results will be obtained if the incubations are started during the day or the night. Besides, whether day or night, organisms are also likely to be in a very different physiological state (either growing or decreasing). Therefore, we recommend that dilution experiments conducted in the field should always be started at the same period of the day to enable comparisons (see also Anderson et al.14 for similar conclusions on bacterivory exerted by small flagellates). Ideally, incubations would be started at different times of the day to capture the intricacies of the community dynamics on a diel cycle. Nevertheless, should the segmented analysis be impossible, we argue that the right time to begin the incubations would be during the night, as this is the time where ingestion rates by protozooplankton are typically lower (e.g.,29,57,58, this study) and would, consequently, reduce their quota of Chl a in the system.Lastly, we want to stress that we are aware that our study does not represent natural biodiversity because our experiments were conducted in the laboratory with a few species. Nevertheless, we attempted to use common species of wide distribution for each major group of protists to provide a better institutionalisation of our conclusions. Further to the choice of predator and prey is their concentrations and proportions. Being a laboratory experiment designed to understand fundamental mechanisms within a dilution grazing experiment, we departed from near saturating food conditions from where we started the dilution series. In nature, the concentrations that we used may be high but are not unrealistic, and actually lower than in many bloom scenarios. We included diatoms at high concentrations, even knowing that they are not the preferred prey of most grazers34, because diatoms are very abundant in many natural ecosystems and to stress the point of food selection within the experiment. For sure, using different proportions of prey would have rendered different results. However, as previously mentioned, our aim was not to seek flaws in the dilution technique, but to understand the role of mixoplankton in these experiments and the complex trophic interactions that may occur within. Ultimately, with our choice of prey and their concentrations, we have proven that when there is no selection for a massively abundant prey, the use of Chl a as a proxy for community abundances may underestimate actual grazing rates.Some other aspects of our experiments may also be criticised because they do not fully match a standard dilution experiment. For instance, we manipulated light, adding complexity to the study. However, this manipulation enabled the deepening into the drivers of the mixoplanktonic and protozooplanktonic grazing responses. Another characteristic, perhaps awkward, of our study is that we allowed the grazers to deplete their prey before starting the experiment. One may argue this procedure does not mimic the natural previous trophic history a grazer may have in nature. Yet, in nature, when facing a dilution experiment, it is impossible to ascertain whether the organisms are encountering novel prey or not. Indeed, they (prey and predator) could have just migrated into such conditions, or be subject to famine, or just moved from a food patch. In any case, it is true that a consistent “hunger response” would have affected our initial grazing values, biasing grazing rate estimates. To overcome this artefact, we let the grazers feed for about one hour before starting the actual dilution assay (see the “Methods” section). From that point on, any dilution is, in fact, an abrupt alteration of the food scenario, which is likely more important than the previous trophic history of the grazer.In summary, with these laboratory experiments, we have presented evidence calling for a revision of the use of chlorophyll in dilution grazing experiments5,10, and we have highlighted the need to observe the organismal composition of both initial and final communities to better understand the dynamics during the dilution grazing experiments51. This approach will not incorporate mixoplanktonic activity into the dilution technique per se however if combined with LFLA (see5,17), a semi-quantitative approach to disentangle the contribution of mixoplankton to community grazing could be achieved (although not perfect). An alternative (and perhaps more elegant) solution could be the integration of the experimental technique with in silico modelling. The modelling approaches of the dilution technique have already been used, for example, to disentangle niche competition63 and to explore nonlinear grazer responses20. We believe that our experimental design and knowledge of the previously indicated data could be of use for the configuration of a dilution grazing model, which could then be validated in the field (and, optimistically, coupled to the ubiquitous application of the dilution technique across the globe). We cannot guarantee that having a properly constructed model that mimics the dilution technique will be the solution to the mixoplankton paradigm. However, it may provide a step towards that goal as it could finally shed much-needed light on the mixo- and heterotrophic contributions to the grazing pressure of a given system. To quote from the commentary of Flynn et al.6, it could provide the answer to the question of whether mixoplankton are de facto “another of the Emperor’s New Suit of Clothes” or, “on the other hand (…) collectively worthy of more detailed inclusion in models”. More