Postmortem vital staining in benthic foraminifera; duration and importance in population and distributional studies

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
I carried out an experiment on living foraminifera from McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, to determine how long rose Bengal and Sudan black B would stain heat-killed foraminifera. After four weeks, both vital stains continued to stain dead foraminiferal protoplasm. Rose Bengal stained significantly more tests than Sudan black B. At the start of the experiment, the actual proportion of living foraminifera in the sediments was determined by ATP assay. Both stains reflected erroneous proportions of living individuals, as determined by ATP assay. Certain species reacted differently to the type of stain used. As considerable vertical and horizontal displacement (i.e., passive transport) can occur over the observed time periods that dead foraminifera continue to stain, it is important to address this problem when interpreting stained material for distributional or population studies.