Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Plankton

Thanks for sharing that information. It does have some value.
My comments from my perspective about phytoplankton are:
Data points from that phytoplankton growth curve have IMO some characters or features that make comparison of them to "wild" freshwater phytoplankton highly questionable as far as predictable similarity. 1. They were all lab cultures. Lab algae cultures can behave differently compared to regular species out in nature, because some of the lab species have been in culture for decades and they have "lost" some of the wild traits. 2. They are all marine species. Marine species can to my knowledge behave differently than many of the species found in freshwater ponds. They are considered different species for reasons. Comparing marine and freshwater organisms is always suspect from my experience and IMO . 3. all of the data in Figs 1 & 2 were from studies using continuous light. Again not natural conditions. Many of these points would be overlooked by most laymen and even some scientists.
It is interesting that many of the species dropped out when the temperature got above 78.8F. This suggests to me that the species growing in the higher temps were fewer in number and adapted to warmest waters. The chart does not indicate what species were growing at each temperature range, for example those present at every 5 degrees C increment. There were some species also growing at 3-10 C (37-50F). But we do not know if those were the same species that were growing at 60, 70 or 80F.

I don't put much importance or value to information in that chart as to how it applies to our wild freshwater algae phytoplankton populations. The research paper was a paper about phytoplankton modeling where the authors were looking for trends to create a model. The authors were careful to always state the data were for algae in the marine, ocean or sea habitats. The figures 1 & 2 do have some merit for freshwater phytoplankon. The figures 1&2 were created to make a point, but one has to be careful that the information is not naively extrapolated to apply to all phytoplankton or other points/topics, concepts. The data apply to the types or species of algae that were used to create the data and we don't know what those species were. To me it is similar to saying that 300 meat samples from agriculture farms had red color. Then the trend is all meat will likely be red meat. What I am basically saying is - be careful how one interprets published data. I'm sure that similar cautions apply to many other professions.

I am a specialist in phytoplankton and algae, so it stands to reason that I would be overly opinionated or would critically evaluate these topics. Do not take my opinions as a personal attack. Tums posts and FnC's questions generated some good discussion and maybe were helpful to a few others. Thanks to all for participating.