Spatial variability of summer and autumn phytoplankton community structure in Xiamen Western Bay based on pigment analysis

The spatial variations of phytoplankton community structure in the Xiamen Western Bay during the summer and autumn cruises in 2001 were investigated based on HPLC analysis of photosynthetic pigments in algal cells and CHEMTAX processing of pigment data. The Chl a concentration reached 18.9 μg/L in the summer and declined to 0.28–2.17 in the autumn, respectively, consistent with the observation of diatom blooms in June. Among the accessory pigments, fucoxanthin was consistently the most abundant, ranging from 0.172 to 8.46 μg/L, with the maximum concentrations in June. 19’- hexfucoxanthin and alloxanthin were the other two abundant pigments in the summer and autumn. In addition, 19’-butanoyloxyfucoxanthin or peridinin was also important in late autumn. Generally the biomass of all the phytoplankton or each group was higher in the inner part than the mouth of this bay, represented by Chl a. CHEMTAX processing revealed the dominance of diatoms with their contribution of 14.6%–52.5% to the total Chl a, but its importance decreased in the autumn. Cryptophytes and Haptophytes, with an average contribution of 16.9%–31.4% and 12.1%–26.3%, were the other two important groups, especially in the autumn. On the contrary, Dinoflagellates and Chlorophytes were the minor groups, but the former became important sporadically in the autumn. It was suggested that there was distinctive variation in both the phytoplankton community structure and biomass between summer and autumn in the Xiamen Western Bay and the latter was coupled to the changes in temperature and dissolved oxygen. However, the spatial variation of the phytoplankton community structure was not as clear as the trend in the biomass of phytoplankton among all the sites in this bay.