Variance within homogeneous phytoplankton populations, III: Analysis of natural populations

✍ Scribed by J. W. Campbell; C. M. Yentsch; T. L. Cucci

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 547 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0196-4763
• DOI: 10.1002/cyto.990100516

✦ Synopsis

A theoretical framework for interpreting flow cytometric histograms from homogeneous phytoplankton populations was developed in part I of this series of articles and applied to chlorophyll fluorescence histograms from clonal cultures in part 11. In this paper, we demonstrate the application of this framework to the analysis of cell volume distributions found in a natural assemblage of phytoplankton from the Gulf of California. Flow cytometric analyses of a surface water sample incubated for a period of 61 h revealed the sequential growth and decline of three distinct subpopulations. Cell volume distributions for each subpopulation measured at different times were analyzed, and the theoretical density function described in parts I and 11 was fitted to these distributions. The range of cell volumes within each subpopulation was similar to that predicted for asynchronous populations.