Shellfish, such as clams, mussels, and oysters, feed on marine plankton. At least one species of dinoflagellate, Gonyaulax catenella Whedon and Kofoid, has been shown by Sommer and coworkers (1) to be a source of the poison found in the California mussel, Mytdus californianus Conrad. The present investigation was carried out to determine the feasibility of collecting the plankton and extracting...

The effect and fate of dry atmospheric deposition on nutrient-starved plankton in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (EMS; Crete, 2012) was tested by spiking oligotrophic surface seawater mesocosms (3 m3) with Saharan dust (SD; 1.6 g L−1; 23 nmol NOxmg −1; 2.4 nmol PO4mg −1) or mixed aerosols (A; 1.0 g L−1; 54 nmol NOxmg −1; 3.0 nmol PO4mg −1) collected from natural and anthropogenic sources. Using ...

Stream and lake ecosystems in agricultural watersheds are exposed to fungicide inputs that can threaten the structure and functioning of aquatic microbial communities. This research analyzes the impact of the triazole fungicide tebuconazole (TBZ) on natural biofilm and plankton microbial communities from sites presenting different degrees of agricultural contamination. Biofilm and plankton comm...

[1] Mid-Cretaceous (Barremian-Turonian) plankton preserved in deep-sea marl, organic-rich shale, and pelagic carbonate hold an important record of how the marine biosphere responded to shortand long-term changes in the ocean-climate system. Oceanic anoxic events (OAEs) were short-lived episodes of organic carbon burial that are distinguished by their widespread distribution as discrete beds of ...

We present a system to recognize underwater plankton images from the Shadow Image Particle Profiling Evaluation Recorder. As some images do not have clear contours, we develop several features that do not heavily depend on the contour information. A soft margin support vector machine (SVM) was used as the classifier. We developed a new way to assign probability after multi-class SVM classificat...

The ocean dominates the surface of our planet and plays a major role in regulating the biosphere. For example, the microscopic photosynthetic organisms living within provide 50% of the oxygen we breathe, and much of our food and mineral resources are extracted from the ocean. In a time of ecological crisis and major changes in our society, it is essential to turn our attention towards the sea t...

Relationships between six calcifying plankton groups and pH are explored in a highly biologically productive and data-rich area of the central North Sea using time-series datasets. The long-term trends show that abundances of foraminiferans, coccolithophores, and echinoderm larvae have risen over the last few decades while the abundances of bivalves and pteropods have declined. Despite good cov...

Despite its notoriety as a human pathogen, Vibrio cholerae is an aquatic microbe suited to live in freshwater, estuarine, and marine environments where biofilm formation may provide a selective advantage. Here we report characterization of biofilms formed on abiotic and biotic surfaces by two non-O1/O139 V. cholerae strains, TP and SIO, and by the O1 V. cholerae strain N16961 in addition to the...

32 33 Marine plankton ecosystems are an important component of biogeochemical cycling in the oceans. 34 Operational plankton functional type (PFT) models, that group plankton according to their 35 biogeochemical properties, are currently being developed to resolve biogenic gas exchange between 36 the ocean and atmosphere, and to model the lowest trophic levels in fisheries models. A 37 fundamen...