Mixing processes in lakes are key factors controlling light availability for phytoplankton growth, but understanding the contribution of mixing is often confounded by other factors such as nutrient availability and species dynamics. Our study examined this problem in a low pH, geothermally heated lake dominated by one phytoplankton genus and lacking the complexity of nutrient limitation, phytop...

The generality of the trophic cascade has been an intensely debated topic among ecologists. We conducted a meta-analysis of 54 separate enclosure and pond experiments that measured the response of the zooplankton and phytoplankton to zooplanktivorous fish treatments. These results provide unequivocal support for the trophic cascade hypothesis in freshwater food webs. Zooplanktivorous fish treat...

Phytoplankton are tiny floating plants (algae) living in oceans. In the process of photosynthesis, phytoplankton produces half of the world's oxygen. Moreover, by primary production, death and sinking, they transport carbon from the ocean's surface layer to marine sediments. There are many species of phytoplankton that can be distinguished according to morphology. In this paper, we investigate ...

Phytoplankton growth and stoichiometry depend on the availability of multiple nutrients. We use a mathematical model of phytoplankton with flexible stoichiometry to explain patterns of phytoplankton composition in chemostat experiments and nutrient drawdown dynamics that are found in the field. Exponential growth and equilibrium represent two distinct phases, each amenable to mathematical analy...

The focus of eutrophication research has tended to be upon short-term and experimental studies. However, given the range of factors that can influence eutrophication dynamics, and that these matter over a range of time scales, some discrete, some continuous, eutrophication dynamics may only be fully investigated when long-term, time-series data are available. The present study aims to evaluate ...

Simultaneous measurements of changes in phytoplankton biomass and the metal and phosphorus (P) content of cells have been captured to attest to metal to P stoichiometries for freshwater phytoplankton. Three Scottish lakes that had received high, medium or low metal contamination from the atmosphere were selected for study. Phytoplankton cells were collected and Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass S...

Autotrophic picoplankton (APP) abundance and contribution to phytoplankton biomass was studied in Hungarian shallow lakes to test the effect of inorganic turbidity determining the size distribution of the phytoplankton. The studied lakes displayed wide turbidity (TSS: 4-2250 mg l-1) and phytoplankton biomass (chlorophyll a: 1-460 μg l-1) range, as well as APP abundance (0 and 100 million cells ...

[1] Seasonal coherence between satellite-derived phytoplankton parameters (chlorophyll a concentration (Chl) and phytoplankton bloom initiation time (BIT)), environmental variables (sea ice concentration, surface solar radiation, and wind speed), and climate patterns (El Niño 3.4, the Southern Annular Mode, the Pacific South America pattern, the semiannual oscillation, and the wave-3 stationary...

To better understand seasonal variation in phytoplankton community structure in the East China Sea (ECS), 4 research cruises were carried out between August 2009 and June 2011 over the continental shelf. Phytoplankton community structure and ambient seawater physicochemical parameters were examined. The phytoplankton community in the ECS was mainly composed of diatoms and dinoflagellates, with ...

We motivate and analyse a reaction-advection-diffusion model for the dynamics of a phytoplankton species. The reproductive rate of the phytoplankton is determined by the local light intensity. The light intensity decreases with depth due to absorption by water and phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is transported by turbulent diffusion in a water column of given depth. Furthermore, it might be sinkin...