Counting error and the quantitative analysis of phytoplankton communities

Our results establish formally that phytoplankton counting errordecreases with increasing biomass. When combining the individualdensity estimates to yield a single figure, error propagationintroduces great uncertainty around succession and diversityindices. Furthermore, counting error increases the value ofsuccession indices for communities where all species changeat the same rate above the expected value of 0. Consequently,conclusions based on the comparison of succession and diversityindices should only be drawn when the uncertainty derived fromcounting error is considered.