Seasonal Response of Major Phytoplankton Groups to Environmental Variables along the Campeche Coast, Southern Gulf of Mexico

Abstract

To describe the seasonal response of the major phytoplankton groups to environmental variables along the Campeche coast, southeastern Gulf of Mexico, seven shallow-water (ca. 1 m) stations were monitored from January 2019 to January 2020. Orthophosphate, ammonium, nitrite, nitrate and silicate were measured. Several tests, including ANOVA, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, Tukey TSD, Bartlett’s test and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), were applied. The physicochemical variables (temperature, salinity and pH) recorded are typical for the central coast of Campeche. Seasonal characteristics are affected by the shallowness of the study area. The variation of inorganic nutrient concentrations is likely to be related to specific polluting activities. While the abundance of phytoplankton presented a minimum value of 4.1 × 104 cells L−1 in March, the maximum value of 8.8 × 106 cells L−1 occurred in May; the general average was 5.3 × 105 cells L−1. Based on CCA, the correlation between major phytoplankton groups and physical–chemical variables was high (r ≈ 0.8), indicating a significant relationship. The CCA graphs separated the samples of diatoms by higher values of pH and silicate and separated the samples of cyanobacteria with high values of temperature (>30 °C) from the samples with dinoflagellates and nanoflagellates. Nanoflagellates were abundant in the samples with high values of ammonium and phosphate.