The Unpredictability of the Marine Phytoplankton

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on what appears to be a large and partly inherent measure of unpredictability in marine phytoplankton species. Thus, if a species is frequently abundant and occasionally undetectable or if instead it is frequently undetectable and occasionally abundant, it behaves unpredictable in its occasional failure or in its occasional success. The option of abundant or unabundant of below detection, with resolution to just one of these at any given place, results in the close juxtaposition of abundances of a given species (°3.0 cells/cm3) with unabundances or undetectable amounts (the last °0.03 cells/cm3), often under conditions of excess nutrient, and attests to its fast—growing but unpredictable behavior. Such species occur in the Slope Water off the coast of southern New England. Farther away, in the mid—Atlantic, a different lot of predictable but slowly growing species occurs. In terms of a single midocean species an appropriate formula is: if it is a predictable species, then it is a slow grower implying if it is not a slow grower, then it is not a predictable species, with the parts before and after implying reserved for a single Slope Water species. One purpose of this paper is application of a philosophical explanation of an observed concentration of a given species. Such an observation is a resolution of abundant or unabundant or below detection to just one of these. A second purpose is clarification of scientific explanation (Hempel 1970), wherein theory formation is considered to be a suppositional process, as in the if—then sequences of the above formula.