Among 73 taxa, 31 belonged to green-algae, 10 to diatoms and 8 to cyanobacteria. The dominance of the phytoplankton biomass by diatoms was noticeable at this

station as well. They constituted 47% of the total phytoplankton biomass, including undefined Centrales 10–60 μm in diameter (36%), Actinocyclus octonarius var. octonarius (6%), C. meneghiniana (3%). Cryptophyceae constituted 22%, including Teleaulax spp. (15%) and Plagioselmis prolonga (7%), green-algae made up 18%, including the most frequent species Pediastrum boryanum (5%), and dinoflagellates contributed 6%, including the most frequent Ibrutinib genus Protoperidinium (5%). Stations E54 and E62 had the highest proportion of decomposed chlorophyll a relative to intact chlorophyll a (phaeopigment/chlorophyll a ratio), which indicated accelerated phytoplankton decomposition ( Figure 3). All the seawater stations (E53, E54 and E62) were similar in terms of phytoplankton diversity. The Trichostatin A nmr number of taxa was low (28–37), and the biomass was dominated by diatoms (63–90%) and Cryptophyceae (5–16%), while only a few cyanobacteria species were observed. The diatom Coscinodiscus sp. was the main component

at station E54, constituting 88% of the whole phytoplankton biomass there. At stations E53 and E62 this diatom was less abundant ( Figure 2); A. octonarius var. octonarius (4–57%), the Cryptophyceae Teleaulax spp. (11%) and P. prolonga (4–5%), as well as the ciliate Mesodinium rubrum (4%) contributed to the biomass of phytoplankton. The clone library (station E54) contained, besides bacterioplankton, some eukaryotic sequences, mostly of phytoplankton: 7 Chlorophyta, 6 Stramenopiles, 1 Haptophyceae and 1 Alveolata. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene diversity illustrated the differences in bacterial communities among the sampling sites. Each terminal restriction fragment (TRF) represents an operational taxonomic unit (OTU). The presence of TRFs in a sample and their relative

abundance are indications of differences between bacterial communities. Overall, 232 terminal restriction fragments (TRFs) were identified, with 52–95 TRFs (median 75 TRFs) per individual sample. We statistically analysed the presence and relative abundance of TRFs and investigated environmental parameters to gain further insights Dapagliflozin into the ecosystem. The nMDS, CCA and PCA analyses suggested a separation of bacterio-plankton communities into populations inhabiting the inner part of the gulf (E53, ZN2) and the outer part of the gulf together with the open sea (E54, E62) (Figure 5, see page 836). The Kiezmark station was excluded from the statistical analysis, because the biological and environmental parameters there had much higher values. CCA explained 77% of the variability (inertia of total variance = 1.3483, inertia of the first two constrained axes = 1.0441) and PCA 63.2% (34.