A REFINED DILUTION TECHNIQUE FOR MEASURING THE COMMUNITY GRAZING IMPACT OF MICROZOOPLANKTON, WITH EXPERIMENTAL TESTS IN THE CENTRAL EQUATORIAL PACIFIC

The standard dilution technique can provide unbiased estimates of phyt oplankton growth and microzooplankton grazing rates only when certain restrictive assumptions are met. The most important of these assumptio ns - that grazing impact Varies in direct proportion to the dilution o f grazer population density - can be easily violated when clearance ra te of individual grazers and/or growth response of the grazer populati on vary significantly with food concentration over the course of the i ncubation. We have developed a modified protocol which now allows the dilution technique to be applied unambiguously, even when its original assumptions may be violated. The new protocol uses flow-cytometry mea sured disappearance of fluorescently labeled tracer cells (FLB or FLA) as an internal measure of 'relative grazing activity' in each dilutio n treatment. Coefficients of phytoplankton growth and mortality rates are determined from Model II regression analyses of 'net growth' versu s 'relative grazing', rather than the usual Model I regressions of 'ne t growth' versus 'dilution factor'. Tests of this hybrid experimental design in the central equatorial Pacific during an EQPAC cruise in Aug ust 1992 gave results essentially identical to the standard dilution i nterpretation.