Development of a Continuous Phytoplankton Culture System for Ocean Acidification Experiments

Water

Cathryn Wynn-Edwards³  Rob King¹  So Kawaguchi³  Andrew Davidson³  Simon Wright³  Peter D. Nichols² 

[1] Australian Antarctic Division, 203 Channel Hwy, Kingston, Tasmania 7050, Australia; E-Mail:;Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 80, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia;Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 129, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia; E-Mails:

关键词: phytoplankton;    continuous culture;    ocean acidification;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w6061860

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Around one third of all anthropogenic CO₂ emissions have been absorbed by the oceans, causing changes in seawater pH and carbonate chemistry. These changes have the potential to affect phytoplankton, which are critically important for marine food webs and the global carbon cycle. However, our current knowledge of how phytoplankton will respond to these changes is limited to a few laboratory and mesocosm experiments. Long-term experiments are needed to determine the vulnerability of phytoplankton to enhanced pCO₂. Maintaining phytoplankton cultures in exponential growth for extended periods of time is logistically difficult and labour intensive. Here we describe a continuous culture system that greatly reduces the time required to maintain phytoplankton cultures, and minimises variation in experimental pCO₂ treatments over time. This system is simple, relatively cheap, flexible, and allows long-term experiments to be performed to further our understanding of chronic responses and adaptation by phytoplankton species to future ocean acidification.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.