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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 59(1)

Bacterial abundance and production, and their relation to primary production in tropical coastal waters of Peninsular Malaysia

Choon Weng Lee A B and Chui Wei Bong A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Laboratory of Microbial Ecology, Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

B Corresponding author. Email: lee@um.edu.my

Marine and Freshwater Research 59(1) 10-21 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF07099
Submitted: 16 May 2007  Accepted: 5 December 2007   Published: 25 January 2008

Abstract

In the present study, the relationship between bacteria and phytoplankton in tropical coastal waters was investigated. The bacterial abundance, bacterial production, chlorophyll a concentration and net primary production were measured at several locations in the coastal waters of Peninsular Malaysia. Chlorophyll a concentration ranged from 0.40 to 32.81 μg L–1, whereas bacterial abundance ranged from 0.1 to 97.5 × 106 cells mL–1. Net primary production ranged from 8.49 to 55.95 μg C L–1 h–1, whereas bacterial production ranged from 0.17 to 70.66 μg C L–1 h–1. In the present study, the carbon conversion factor used to convert bacterial production (cells mL–1 h–1) into carbon units ranged from 10 to 32.8 fg C cell–1, and was estimated from the bacterial size distribution measured at each location. Both phototrophic and heterotrophic biomass (bacteria–chlorophyll a) and activity (bacterial production–net primary production) were significantly correlated, although their correlation coefficients (r2) were relatively low (r2 = 0.188 and r2 = 0.218 respectively). Linear regression analyses provided the following equations to represent the relationship between: bacteria and chlorophyll a (Chl a), log Bacteria = 0.413 log Chl a + 6.057 (P = 0.003); and between bacterial production (BP) and net primary production (NPP), log BP = 0.896 log NPP – 0.394 (P = 0.004), which fitted with published results well. Comparison of annual carbon fluxes confirmed the prevalence of net heterotrophy in these coastal waters, and together with the low correlation coefficients, suggested the role of allochthonous organic matter in supporting heterotrophic activity.

Extra keywords: South China Sea, Straits of Malacca.


Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the South-east Asia Regional Committee for START or SARCS (94/01/CW and 95/01/CW) and Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (eScience 04–01–03-SF0194) for their research grants supporting this work. We would like to thank University of Malaya Maritime Research Center (UMMReC) and Halim Mazmin Ltd for organising the SESMA cruise, and Chong Ving-Ching for organising the sampling trips to Matang. We would also like to thank Isao Kudo for his advice on this work. Lee Choon-Weng is grateful to Venugopalan Ittekkot and the Aquatic Ecosystems of Monsoon Asia Network (ACEMON) for the stimulating discussions and fruitful suggestions at each meeting. Bong Chui-Wei is sponsored by the National Science Fellowship of Malaysia. Finally, we thank three anonymous referees for constructive comments on previous drafts of this paper.


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