Ed Hall edited Results.tex  over 9 years ago

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\subsection{Bulk community characteristics} We first assessed the effect of the resource treatments on the dissolved chemistry and bulk community characteristics of the plankton and the biofilms. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) levels in the control and lowest C:P treatment (10) remained below 2 $\mu$moles C L$^{-1}$ throughout the course of the experiment. Altered resource C:P in the higher two C treatments (C:P 100 and 500) resulted in changes in the DOC concentration of the water column. In the intermediate treatment (C:P 100) DOC increased on the second day and then returned to the same level as the lower two treatments for the remainder of the experiment. In the high carbon (C:P 500) treatment DOC levels climbed gradually from baseline levels on the second day of the experiment to ca. 4$\mu$moles L$^{-1}$ on the sixth day of the experiment.   This increase in DOC in the higher C:P treatments was associated with decreases in planktonic Chl \textit{a} in each treament (Figure 2a), however there was no significant difference in biofilm Chl \textit{a} among treatments (Figure 2b). In combination with the decrease in planktonic Chl \textit{a} on the 6th day of the experiment the highest C:P treatment had approximately 4-fold higher planktonic bacterial abundance than the control and the 10 $\mu$M carbon treatment (Figure 2d). Similarly, biofilms had significantly higher total biomassand carbohydrate  in the high carbon treatment compared to the other treatments (Figure 2c). These differences in biomassthickness  could also be clearly visualized among biofilms grown in each treatment. Cell density, biofilm thickness and amount of apparent  EPS all increased visually with increasing C:P resource treatment. Figure treatment (Figure  3). Thus the shift in resource C:P altered the pool size of the algal and bacterial communities in both the plankton and biofilm communities. Clear differences in bacterial and algal pool size among treatments allowed us to address how shifts in pool sizes affected community richness and membership within and among plankton and biofilm communities. \subsection{Planktonic and biofilm community structure}