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JOURNAL OF PLANKTON RESEARCH | VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 1 | PAGES 17-42 | 1998
© Oxford University Press
research-article |
Seasonal variations in physiological parameters of phytoplankton across the North Atlantic
1Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, Canada 2Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Dar-es-Salaam PO Box 668 Zanzibar, Tanzania 3Biological Oceanography Division, Bedford Institute of Oceanography Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B2Y 4A2, Canada
Received on March 17, 1997; accepted on August 22, 1997
Variations in the shapes of the action and absorption spectra, and the physiological parameters of phytoplankton [
B, the biomass (B)-specific initial slope of the photosynthesis-irradiance curve; 
the plateau of the curve; 
m), the maximum quantum yield of photosynthesis], were studied. Data were collected in the North Atlantic in five biogeochemical provinces for two seasons: in fall of 1992 and spring of 1993. Further, some nine independent variables were tested for their ability to predict the physiological parameters, using linear regression analyses. It was found that the parameters were more variable between seasons than between provinces, although the differences in the spectral shapes between provinces were significant. It was also shown that several independent variables (alone or in combination) were able to predict a significant fraction of the total variance in the parameters. However, the correlation between variables and parameters differed unsystematically both between provinces and seasons. The results suggest that predicting a parameter from an independent variable would have to be carried out at a province level: the relationship changed or disappeared when data from two or more provinces were pooled.