Table 1.

Time required to detect phytoplankton growth (Eq. 2) in dilution cultures beginning with one viable cell in a culture tube containing a volume of 5 mL, assuming that the lower limit of detection (LLD_0.1) corresponds to 0.1 mg chlorophyll a m⁻³, a concentration that is readily resolved with fluorometers deployed in the open ocean (e.g., Letelier et al. 2004); the corresponding minimum number of cells per tube is N _d

	Dimension (μm)	Chlorophyll quota (pg cell−1)	Growth rate (day−1)	N d (cells tube−1)	Time to detection (t d, day−1)
Gymnodinium vitiligo a	11	2.31	0.22	216	24.4
Rhodomonas salina c	11.6	0.89	0.64	562	9.9
Thalassiosira weissflogii c	13.0	3.07	0.83	163	6.1
Heterosigma akashiwo c	15.5	2.65	0.56	189	9.4
Chlamydomonas sp.a	18.6	11.3	0.28	44	13.5
Gymnodinium sanguineum b	44	20.4	0.23	9	13.9

The size is minimum dimension (Montagnes et al. 1994) or average diameter (Neale et al. 1998, H.L. MacIntyre et al. unpublished)

^aMontagnes et al. (1994): 16 °C

^bNow Akashiwo sanguinea. From Neale et al. (1998): 25 °C

^cH.L. MacIntyre et al. unpublished: 18 °C