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How Bacteria Respond to Algal Blooms (4 of 4)

Caption: This is a scheme depicting the algae-bacteria interactions in spring 2009. It takes barely two months for the algae bloom to develop and to be degraded by a subsequent bacterioplankton bloom. The formation of the algae bloom is strongly triggered by the increasing solar radiation in spring. Not only bacteria, but also viruses and zooplankton, participate in the degradation of the bloom. It is also the viruses and protozoa which eventually terminate the bacterial bloom. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the May 4, 2012, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by H. Teeling at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, and colleagues was titled, "Substrate-Controlled Succession of Marine Bacterioplankton Populations Induced by a Phytoplankton Bloom."

Credit: Image © H. Teeling/R. Dunker

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