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This paper investigates the fundamental mechanisms driving plankton population distributions and spatial heterogeneity by developing a minimalistic theoretical model incorporating stochastic growth rate fluctuations and effective ocean dispersal. By integrating global metabarcoding, microscopy, and chlorophyll data, the authors demonstrate that this model accurately reproduces observed spatial correlation decays, Taylor's law crossover regimes, and local diversity and biomass distributions. The findings suggest that an emergent correlation length, arising from the interplay of diffusivity and fluctuating growth, governs plankton spatial structure across scales, reconciling local variability with macroecological patterns.
Plankton's ubiquitous patchy distributions and population regularities are explained by a simple model of fluctuating growth and ocean currents.
Planktonic communities exhibit ubiquitous population distributions and patchy spatial structures, yet the fundamental mechanisms driving them remain debated. Here, we derive these regularities from a minimalistic theoretical description that incorporates stochastic fluctuations in growth rates and effective ocean dispersal. We combine global metabarcoding, microscopy, and high-resolution chlorophyll datasets and show that the decay of spatial correlations, the crossover regimes of Taylor's law, the patterns of local species diversity and biomass distributions agree with common underlying dynamics. These results suggest that the intertwined effect of diffusivity and fluctuating growth rate, captured by an emergent correlation length, shapes plankton spatial heterogeneity from local to long-range scales, reconciling local variability with macroecological patterns.