Andres Gutierrez-Rodriguez

• Roscoff Marine Station

We investigated phytoplankton production rates and grazing fates in the Costa Rica Dome (CRD) during summer 2010 based on dilution depth profiles analyzed by flow cytometry and pigments and mesozooplankton grazing assessed by gut fluorescence. Three community production estimates, from 14C uptake (1025 ± 113 mg C m−2 day−1) and from dilution experi...

We investigated biomass, size-structure, composition, depth distributions and spatial variability of the phytoplankton community in the Costa Rica Dome (CRD) in June–July 2010. Euphotic zone profiles were sampled daily during Lagrangian experiments in and out of the dome region, and the community was analyzed using a combination of digital epifluor...

The Costa Rica Dome (CRD) represents a classic case of the bloom-forming capacity of small phytoplankton. Unlike other upwelling systems, autotrophic biomass in the CRD is dominated by picocyanobacteria and small eukaryotes that outcompete larger diatoms and reach extremely high biomass levels. We investigated responses of the subsurface phytoplank...

According to modern oceanographic perspectives that emphasize microbial pathways, phagotrophic protists comprise one to several levels of intermediate consumers between phytoplankton and larger metazooplankton (copepods and krill). However, recent attempts to quantify pelagic trophic structure in the open ocean using nitrogen stable isotope techniq...

We investigated the spatial variability of picocyanobacterial community structure across the Costa Rica Dome (CRD), an offshore upwelling system characterized by high seasonal abundance of Synechococcus spp. We constructed clone libraries of the rpoC1 gene to survey picocyanobacterial diversity and developed specific real-time quantitative polymera...