Complementary support for the new ecological concept of ‘bacterial independence on contemporary phytoplankton production’ in oceanic waters

Abstract

Different calculations of bacterial carbon demand (BCD) were applied to bacterioplanktonic production datasets from oceanic euphotic waters and compared with estimates of dissolved and total phytoplanktonic production estimates. All calculations showed that the BCD in low productive waters was not supported by contemporary dissolved phytoplanktonic production or by the whole phytoplanktonic production when empirically modeled bacterial respiration and growth efficiency rates were used. This supports the new ecological concept of bacterial independence on phytoplankton production at the time scales (days, weeks) relevant to the microbial generation times observed in the oceans and used in biological and ecological models.