Flow Cytometry Data to Unravel Phytoplankton Growth and Turnover Rates

Since 2010, our custom-built continuous flow cytometer, SeaFlow, has been deployed on nearly 100 research cruises to collect per cell fluorescence and light scatter data for approximately 800 billion phytoplankton cells less than 5 micron in size. We previously converted the light scatter data to cell diameter to map out high resolutions distributions of phytoplankton cell size and carbon quotas across 200,000 km of surface ocean and 80 degrees of latitude. We are currently coupling these these observations with size-structured population models to estimate cell growth and turnover rates, which are essential in understanding how phytoplankton adapt to their environment and their impact on carbon cycling.

• Datasets are available here without restriction.

• Description of the SeaFlow data can be found in Ribalet et al. 2019.

• Description of the size-structured population model can be found in Mattern et al. 2022.

Funding sources

Project supported by grants from the Simons Foundation(#574495 to François Ribalet).