Oxygen-isotope values of invertebrate cuticle preserved in lake sediments have been used in palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, generally with the assumption that fractionation of oxygen isotopes between cuticle and water ( $$\upalpha_{\text{cuticle}-\text{H}_{2}\text{O}}$$ α cuticle - H 2 O ) is independent of temperature. We cultured chironomid larvae in the laboratory with labelled oxygen-isotope water and across a range o...

Size‐spectral approaches quantify the efficiency of energy transfer through food webs, but theory and field studies disagree over how changes in temperature, nutrients, and extreme weather impact on this efficiency. We address this at two scales: via 6 years of weekly sampling of the plankton size spectrum at the Plymouth L4 shelf sea site, and via a new, global‐scale, meta‐analysis of aquatic size spectra. The time series sho...

Continental margins are disproportionally important for global primary production, fisheries and CO 2 uptake. However, across the Northeast Atlantic shelves, there has been an ongoing summertime decline of key biota—large diatoms, dinoflagellates and copepods—that traditionally fuel higher tropic levels such as fish, sea birds and marine mammals. Here, we combine multiple time series with in situ process studies to link these...

The Plymouth L4 time plankton series in the Western English Channel is a textbook example of a shallow, stratifying shelf sea system. Over its 30 yr of weekly sampling, this site has provided a diverse and contrasting suite of numerical and conceptual models of plankton bloom formation, phenology, and seasonal succession. The most recent of these papers, Kenitz et al. (2017) has initiated this comment, partly because we feel t...