The production of antibiotics by plankton algae and its effect upon bacterial activities in the sea
Steemann Nielsen, E. (1955). The production of antibiotics by plankton algae and its effect upon bacterial activities in the sea, in: Papers in Marine Biology and Oceanography. Dedicated to Henry Bryant Bigelow, By His Former Students and Associates on the occasion of The Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 1955. Deep-Sea Research (1953), 3(Supplement): pp. 281-286
In: (1955). Papers in Marine Biology and Oceanography. Dedicated to Henry Bryant Bigelow, By His Former Students and Associates on the occasion of The Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 1955. Deep-Sea Research (1953), 3(Supplement). Pergamon Press: London & New York. 498 pp., more
In: Deep-Sea Research (1953). Pergamon: Oxford; New York. ISSN 0146-6291; e-ISSN 1878-2485, more
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| Abstract |
Laboratory experiments with Chlorella and plankton diatoms show that small concentrations of the algae produce antibiotics which highly decrease the bacterial activities, including respiration. If the concentration of organic matter is about the same as in natural sea water, the decrease in bacterial respiration is of a much higher order of magnitude than the rate of photosynthesis of the algae. The normal light and dark bottle oxygen experiments cannot be used for measuring organic productivity in oligotrophic water. Intense bacterial activities, which occur in the dark bottles as soon as natural sea water is enclosed in the bottles, are much reduced in the light bottles; thus there is an important difference in oxygen consumption between the two kinds of bottles, a difference which has nothing to do with photosynthesis. The disagreement for tropical oceanic water between the oxygen technique and the C-14 technique is thus easy to explain. It is suggested that the average age of the dissolved organic matter found in sea water is some thousand years. This organic matter is most likely the most important food source -although indirectly- for the bottom animals living at very great depths. |
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