Growth limiting nutrients of the East Branch Maple River algal communities: an in vitro manipulation.

Abstract

Phosphorus was found to be a limiting nutrient of the East Branch Maple River benthic algal communities by comparisons of growth rates of nutrient treated replicates and a control of filtered river water. The algal community was divided into sub-communities of small, medium, large, and extra large cell sizes. Even though the mean growth rates of all the enriched replications were higher than the control growth rate, only the phosphorus treatment caused significant increases in growth rates of the communities. Phosphorus also had a significant effect on the growth rate of the algal community as a whole, and therefore being a growth limiting nutrient.