The reliability of grazing rate estimates from dilution experiments: Have we over-estimated rates of organic carbon consumption by microzooplankton?

By John R. Dolan, K. McKeon. 2005

102 citations recorded by the source corpus.

According to a recent global analysis, micro- zooplankton grazing is surprisingly invariant, ranging only between 59 and 74% of phytoplankton primary production across systems differing in seasonality, trophic status, lati- tude, or salinity. Thus an important biological process in the world ocean, the daily consumption of recently fixed carbon, appears nearly constant. We believe this conclusion is an artefact because dilution experiments are 1) prone to provid- ing over-estimates of grazing rates and 2) unlikely to furnish evidence of low grazing rates. In our view the overall average rate of microzooplankton grazing probably does not exceed 50% of primary production and may be even lower in olig- otrophic systems.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9d5a53743244c39a7009fe83ce2c3922b4dc23a5

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In Ecology

1. Bingzhang Chen
2. M. Landry
3. S. Strom
4. Hongbin Liu
5. A. Calbet
6. M. Boersma
7. N. Aberle
8. C. Meunier

In Global and Planetary Change

1. M. Landry
2. Hongbin Liu
3. M. Boersma
4. A. Calbet
5. K. Wiltshire
6. C. Meunier
7. N. Aberle
8. Martin G. J. Löder

In Oceanography

1. M. Landry
2. Bingzhang Chen
3. Hongbin Liu
4. S. Strom
5. A. Calbet
6. M. Boersma
7. C. Meunier
8. N. Aberle

Citations in the corpus

• Does warming enhance the effect of microzooplankton grazing on marine phytoplankton in the ocean? (2012, background): “…in food resources supporting microzooplankton growth during 24-h incubations could lead to overestimates of microzooplankton grazing rates if they are not offset by other dilution effects, such as microzooplankton losses to predators (Landry 1993; Dolan and McKeon 2005; Landry and Calbet 2005).”
• The trophic roles of microzooplankton in marine systems (2008, background): “This intrinsic variability in foodweb dynamics is not always identified in dilution experiments, where negative values are not always reported (Dolan and McKeon, 2005).”
• Microzooplankton grazing in the coastal Gulf of Alaska: Variations in top‐down control of phytoplankton (2007, background): “Dolan and McKeon (2005) used reported ciliate abundances (doubled to account for nano- and dinoflagellate contributions to grazing) and g values from dilution experiments to calculate per capita grazing rates.”
• The role of ciliates, heterotrophic dinoflagellates and copepods in structuring spring plankton communities at Helgoland Roads, North Sea (2011, methodology): “Problems with the estimation of the grazing impact by the dilution technique have been recently discussed (Dolan and McKeon 2005; Landry and Calbet 2005) and the discussion showed that if the restrictions of the dilution technique are recognised, the method has the fundamental advantage of barely…”