Growth and specific Puptake rates of bacterial and phytoplanktonic

Abstract. Predicting heterotrophic bacteria and phytoplank-ton specific growth rates (µ) is of great scientific interest. Many methods have been developed in order to assess bac-terial or phytoplankton µ. One widely used method is to estimate µ from data obtained on biomass or cell abundance and rates of biomass or cell production. According to Kirch-man (2002), the most appropriate approach for estimating µ is simply to divide the production rate by the biomass or cell abundance estimate. Most methods using this approach to estimate µ are based on carbon (C) incorporation rates and C biomass measurements. Nevertheless it is also possible to estimate µ using phosphate (P) data. We showed that par-ticulate phosphate (PartP) can be used to estimate biomass and that the P uptake rate to PartP ratio can be employed to assess µ. Contrary to other methods using C, this estimato