The trophic status of various oceanic provinces as revealed by phytoplankton pigment signatures

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Abstract
For various oceanic regimes, a pigment biomarker approach is used to investigate the relationship between the biomass and taxonomic composition of autotrophic communities. It is demonstrated that chlorophyll standing stocks are linearly related to the diatom (fucoxanthin) and dinoflagellate (peridinin) contents; other phytoplankton diagnostic pigments do not present any significant correlation with chlorophyll standing stocks. A pigment ratio, Fp, is proposed as an estimator of the proportion of new producers’ biomass in a phytoplankton community. The variation of the Fp‐ratio with chlorophyll a biomass and (modeled) primary production rates suggests strong similarities between Fp and the f‐ratio (new production: total production).

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