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Estimating microzooplankton grazing half‐saturation constants from dilution experiments with nonlinear feeding kinetics
Author(s) -
Chen Bingzhang,
Laws Edward A.,
Liu Hongbin,
Huang Bangqin
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
limnology and oceanography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 197
eISSN - 1939-5590
pISSN - 0024-3590
DOI - 10.4319/lo.2014.59.3.0639
Subject(s) - dilution , saturation (graph theory) , grazing , phytoplankton , nonlinear system , constant (computer programming) , mathematics , chemistry , thermodynamics , biology , ecology , physics , nutrient , combinatorics , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
To obtain the grazing half‐saturation constant ( K ) of natural microzooplankton assemblages, we used three nonlinear grazing models (rectilinear, Holling type II, and Holling type III) to fit the detailed data (phytoplankton net specific growth rate vs. dilution factor) of individual dilution experiments that show significant concave curves. In the dataset consisting of 528 experiments, 96 experiments show significant concave curves, and the associated chlorophyll a (Chl a ) concentrations are significantly higher than those of experiments showing linear or convex curves. Experiments showing concave curves likely reflect that these microzooplankton assemblages were under top‐down control. The three models perform equally well in fitting the data. The K values estimated from these 96 experiments vary over three orders of magnitude and are log—log linearly related with ambient Chl a concentrations, but not correlated with temperatures. Estimates of K of natural microzooplankton assemblages tend to be smaller than estimates from laboratory cultures. For the experiments not showing concave curves, it is hard to obtain a robust estimate of K .