Assessment of the application and efficacy of the FlowCam for zooplankton analysis.

While the use of FlowCAM for analysis and identification of phytoplankton is well known and documented, a new generation of FlowCAM with a larger flow cell (5 mm wide x 10 mm high x 7.5 mm tall) allows the system to process mesozooplankton samples. Preliminary analysis showed that the combination of the right flow rate, with a sufficiently-high camera frame rate, were crucial to ensure that the maximum possible number of organisms were completely imaged. To assess the instrument applicability, an experiment with a balanced design was carried out with pump speed and frame rate as controlling factors to evaluate the utility of the system for processing a range of zooplankton samples varying in abundance and species richness. The results were evaluated in relation to information provided by a ZooScan imaging system. The new FlowCAM produced results that were not significantly different from those obtained with the ZooScan. This suggests that this new FlowCAM may be a useful new tool for analysis of preserved mesozooplankton samples.