ULTRAPHYTOPLANKTON IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN-SEA - TOWARDS DERIVING PHYTOPLANKTON BIOMASS FROM FLOW CYTOMETRIC MEASUREMENTS OF ABUNDANCE, FLUORESCENCE AND LIGHT SCATTER
Wkw. Li et al., ULTRAPHYTOPLANKTON IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN-SEA - TOWARDS DERIVING PHYTOPLANKTON BIOMASS FROM FLOW CYTOMETRIC MEASUREMENTS OF ABUNDANCE, FLUORESCENCE AND LIGHT SCATTER, Marine ecology. Progress series, 102(1-2), 1993, pp. 79-87
Prochlorophytes, cyanobacteria and eukaryotic ultraphytoplankton from
the southern Levantine Basin of the eastern Mediterranean Sea were ana
lyzed by flow cytometry to obtain measurements of cell abundance, rela
tive cellular fluorescence and relative cellular light scatter. Assumi
ng that fluorescence is a proxy for chlorophyll and that light scatter
is a proxy for cellular carbon, phytoplankton biomass can be expresse
d as the sum (over all cell groups) of adaptive cellular characteristi
cs (i.e. chorophyll and carbon) weighted by cell abundance. On this ba
sis, much of the carbon appeared attributable to eukaryotic ultraphyto
plankton, but chlorophyll was more evenly partitioned such that the co
ntributions from prochlorophytes and cyanobacteria were also significa
nt. The subsurface chlorophyll maximum coincided with the maximum in t
otal fluorescence but not with the maximum abundance of cells nor with
the presumed maximum in the carbon biomass of ultraphytoplankton.