Abstract
The ability to enumerate, classify, and determine biomass of phytoplankton from environmental samples is essential for determining ecosystem function and their role in the aquatic community and microbial food web. Traditional micro-phytoplankton quantification methods using microscopic techniques require preservation and are slow, tedious and very laborious. The availability of more automated imaging microscopy platforms has revolutionized the way particles and cells are detected within their natural environment. The ability to examine cells unaltered and without preservation is key to providing more accurate cell concentration estimates and overall phytoplankton biomass. The FlowCam® is an imaging cytometry tool that was originally developed for use in aquatic sciences and provides a more rapid and unbiased method for enumerating and classifying phytoplankton within diverse aquatic environments.
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Acknowledgements
Support for this work was provided by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the J.J. MacIsaac Facility for Aquatic Cytometry. I would like to thank Harry Nelson from Fluid Imaging Technologies for providing color images for the manuscript.
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Poulton, N.J. (2016). FlowCam: Quantification and Classification of Phytoplankton by Imaging Flow Cytometry. In: Barteneva, N., Vorobjev, I. (eds) Imaging Flow Cytometry. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1389. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3302-0_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3302-0_17
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