THE IMPORTANCE OF PROCHLOROCOCCUS TO COMMUNITY STRUCTURE IN THE CENTRAL NORTH PACIFIC-OCEAN Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Assessments of plankton community structure in the oligotrophic oceans based solely on microscopy may overstate the importance of heterotrophic bacterial biomass. Using flow cytometry to distinguish heterotrophic bacteria from the photosynthetic procaryotes Prochlorococcus spp., we found that Prochlorococcus contributed 31% of total bacterial counts in the upper 100 m at station ALOHA (2245N, 158W). In terms of carbon, procaryotic biomass was the largest component ( 80%) of the microbial community, but almost half of this was photosynthetic biomass contributed by Prochlorococcus. Overall, the total 200m integrated photosynthetic biomass exceeded heterotrophic bacterial biomass (55 vs. 45%). We suggest that the relative proportion of photosynthetic to heterotrophic bacterial biomass varies among oligotrophic regions of the ocean and that dominance by heterotrophic bacteria is not typical.

published proceedings

  • LIMNOLOGY AND OCEANOGRAPHY

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • CAMPBELL, L., NOLLA, H. A., & VAULOT, D.

citation count

  • 364

complete list of authors

  • CAMPBELL, L||NOLLA, HA||VAULOT, D

publication date

  • June 1994

publisher