Primary production of algae growing on natural and artificial aquatic plants: A study of interactions between epiphytes and their substrate1

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Epiphytes that grew on Potamogeton richardsonii were similar to those Krowing on morphologically similar plastic plants in both biomass (as Chl a ) and primary production per unit area, over the growing seasons of 1976 and 1977. Alkaline phosphatase activity, an indicator of P limitation, was always higher for epiphytes on artificial substrates, which suggests that real plants transfer a small amount of nutrient to their epiphytes. However, specific production of the epiphytes (production per unit of Chl) was not significantly different on the two substrates. These similarities give little support to the hypothesized symbiosis or competition between plant and epiphytes. The living plants appear to be a neutral substrate for algal growth.