Bacteria containing pigments called rhodopsins are flourishing in oceans.

(NOAA)

At a Glance

The bacteria contains pigments called rhodopsins.Unlike algae, they don't pull carbon dioxide out of the air.Rhodopsins flourish in nutrient-poor oceans.

A flourishing type of marine bacteria could speed up global warming, a new study shows.

The bacteria contains pigments called rhodopsins, which absorb sunlight but, unlike algae, don't pull carbon dioxide out of the air. , published this week in the journal Science Advances, found that the bacteria were far more prevalent than thought.

Researchers also discovered that the bacteria congregate in areas where there are less nutrients, which means they are more prevalent in warmer waters where nutrients don't thrive.

That means that as the oceans warm, the bacteria could outcompete algae - which is key to capturing carbon dioxide - for room at the ocean's surface, according to the study.

“Rhodopsins appear to be in a nutrient-poor ocean, and in the future, the ocean will be more nutrient-poor as temperatures change,” lead researcher Laura Gómez-Consarnau, a biology professor at the University of Southern California Dornsife College, said in a press release. “With fewer nutrients near the surface, algae will have limited photosynthesis and the rhodopsin process will be more abundant. We may have a shift in the future, which means the ocean won’t be able to absorb as much carbon as it does today. More CO2 gas may remain in the atmosphere, and the planet may warm faster.”

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Rhodopsins were discovered 20 years ago, and previous studies have shown that they make up about 80 percent of the marine bacteria, according to the press release. This is the first study to measure how highly concentrated they are in the ocean and where they live.

The researchers took samples from waters as deep as 356 feet along a 3,000-mile-long swath of the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. They found that rhodopsins were more prevalent than previously thought, especially in warmer, nutrient-poor waters, and discovered that they outperformed algae in capturing light.

The study says that computer modeling of climate change doesn't account for the microbial shift that could occur if rhodopsins continue to flourish.

“Oceans are important for climate change because they play a key role in the carbon cycle," Gómez-Consarnau said. "Understanding how that works, and the marine organisms involved, helps us refine our climate models to predict climate in the future.”