Carotenoid Pigments in Microzooplankton: Characterization and Relation to Biomass

在过去的十年中，小型浮游动物显然是中上层食物链过程的重要贡献者。估计微型浮游动物的生物量是一个主要的困难，可能通过使用色素类似物来解决。用高效液相色谱法可以很容易地从微型浮游动物中分离出类胡萝卜素。利用各种各样的养殖动物和不同的养殖条件，这项研究将解决组织类胡萝卜素含量和微型浮游动物生物量之间的相关性，并确定这种关系中的主要差异来源。这项研究不仅将评估这些色素作为生物量估计器的有用性，还将指明在远洋生态学中研究色素生物化学的新领域。食物链相互作用的快速和原位测量是未来对海洋生物过程进行长期、随意观察的基础的一部分。生物海洋学的发展需要具有现场适用性的新技术，这项研究将详细评估一种新方法及其误差来源。近几年对海洋食物链动态的仔细研究表明，许多捕食活动和物质转移涉及普通浮游生物网没有捕获的小生物。生物体又多又小，很难以快速、可重复的方式确定它们的数量意义。由于它们含有可以快速提取和分析的类胡萝卜素色素，因此色素含量可能是动物生物量的有用指标。这种可能性将在实验室培养的各种生物上进行测试，并从海洋中收集。

Over the past decade it has become clear that microzooplankton are important contributors to pelagic food chain processes. Estimating microzooplanktonic biomass is one major difficulty that can possibly be resolved by use of pigment analogs. The carotenoid pigments are easily isolated from microzooplankton by high performance liquid chromatography. Using a wide variety of cultured animals and various culture conditions, the study will address the correlation between tissue carotenoid content and microzooplankton biomass and identify principal sources of variance in the relationship. The study will not only evaluate the usefulness of these pigments as biomass estimators, but will indicate new areas of investigation of pigment biochemistry in pelagic ecology. Fast and >in situ> measures of food chain interactions are part of the foundation for future long term, untended observations of biological processes in the sea. New techniques with field applicability are necessary for the advancement of biological oceanography, and this study will assess a new method and its sources of error in detail. %%% Close examination of the food chain dynamics of the sea in recent years has shown that much predatory activity and transfer of material involves small organisms not captured by ordinary plankton nets. The organisms are numerous and small making it difficult to establish their quantitative significance in a fast, repeatable way. Since they contain carotenoid pigments which can be extracted and analyzed quickly, the pigment content may be a useful indicator of animal biomass. This possibility will be tested on a variety of organisms grown in the laboratory and collected from the sea.//