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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1982 Aug;79(16):5001–5005. doi: 10.1073/pnas.79.16.5001

Microscale nutrient patches produced by zooplankton

John T Lehman *,, Donald Scavia *,
PMCID: PMC346814  PMID: 16593218

Abstract

Both track autoradiography and grain-density autoradiography show that individual zooplankton create miniature patches of dissolved nutrients and that algae exploit those regions to absorb phosphate. The patches are short lived and can be dispersed artificially by small-scale turbulence. Our data support a simple model of encounters between algae and nutrient plumes produced by swimming zooplankton.

Keywords: autoradiography, phosphate uptake, phytoplankton

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Lehman J. T., Scavia D. Microscale patchiness of nutrients in plankton communities. Science. 1982 May 14;216(4547):729–730. doi: 10.1126/science.216.4547.729. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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