Clay presence: abundance and size of bacterioplankton

摘要

During previous studies of clay-turbid waters we had noted that bacterioplankton associated with the clay were both abundant and of large size (Davalos-Lind & Lind 2001, Lind & Davalos-Lind 1991). We could not determine if this was due to some aspect of the clay, such as provision of organic-rich surfaces, or to some other factor such as the source of the clay and presumed bacterioplankton - resuspension, riverine, etc. In the process of conducting mesocosm experiments on the role of clay in the movement of zinc from the water of Lake Chapala, Mexico into small fishes (Lind et al. 2000), we had the opportunity of simultaneously measuring changes in bacterioplankton abundance and size of cells in mesocosms containing and not containing suspended clay at concentrations typical for this lake.