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JPR Advance Access originally published online on January 27, 2008
Journal of Plankton Research 2008 30(4):379-392; doi:10.1093/plankt/fbn004
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The grazing impact of microzooplankton off south west Western Australia: as measured by the dilution technique

H. L. Paterson1,2,*, B. Knott1, A. J. Koslow3,{dagger} and A. M. Waite2

1 School of Animal Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia 2 MO15, School of Environmental Systems Engineering, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia 3 CSIRO, Marine and Atmospheric Research, Private bag 5, Wembley, WA 6913

* CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: harriet.paterson{at}graduates.uwa.edu.au

Received on June 13, 2007; revised on November 15, 2007; accepted on January 10, 2008


  Abstract

Grazing rates of microzooplankton feeding on picophytoplankton (Flow-cytometry) and total phytoplankton (Chlorophyll a) were measured in the eastern Indian Ocean off south west Western Australia from February 2003 to December 2004. Three sites representing different oceanographic habitats, the coastal lagoon, the outer shelf and the continental slope (1000 m) were sampled. The dilution method of Landry and Hassett (1982, Estimating the grazing impact of marine micro-zooplankton. Mar. Biol., 67, 283–288) was used and analysed by chlorophyll a analysis and flow-cytometry. During summer, the apparent growth rate of total phytoplankton exceeded loss due to microzooplankton grazing in the lagoon and at the outer shelf. On the slope, the phytoplankton assemblage was always dominated by small cells (<5 µm). Although their apparent growth rates were also higher in summer, these were matched by increasing microzooplankton grazing rates. Saturated feeding responses at the outer shelf and slope stations during summer were detected. In this low prey, low productivity environment, this response is either a new type of threshold feeding or an artefact of the dilution method which would result in an over-estimate of both phytoplankton growth and microzooplankton grazing.

{dagger} Present address: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD 0201, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California 92093-0201, USA

Corresponding editor: Roger Harris


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