Zooplankton grazing effects on 14C-based phytoplankton production measurements: a theoretical study
- 1 January 1983
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Journal of Plankton Research
- Vol. 5 (1) , 83-94
- https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/5.1.83
Abstract
A model constructed to describe carbon dynamics of phytoplankton growth during 14 C-tracer incubations gives the range of error in estimating specific growth rates and productivity rates caused by zooplankton grazing during the incubation. Error increases with increasing incubation times and higher specific growth rates. The range of these errors can be given as a function of the specific growth rate calculated from measurements. At the low calculated specific growth rates of the oligotrophic Pacific Ocean, 0.2 d −1 , errors are ≤ 16%. Similar arguments suggest that bacterial uptake of excreted organics would not cause large errors at low oligotrophic ocean growth rates. There are, however, other possible ways that 14 C-based productivity estimates could be wrong.This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: