Comparison of benthic invertebrate body phosphorus determined by ICP-MS and colorimetry

Molybdenum blue colorimetry (MBC) is the dominant, well-established method used for determining total P in environmental media, including in organismal tissues. However, other elemental methods for P determination are available, including inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Given the extensive literature using MBC to determine P in organismal samples, it is important to assess P analyses by ICP-MS and MBC to ensure that the two methods produce comparable data. In this work, we compared ICP-MS and MBC for total P determination in freshwater invertebrates, including the potential for analytical interferences, by applying both methods to three standard reference materials (SRMs) and 106 freshwater invertebrate samples. Average total P recoveries for SRMs were slightly higher for ICP-MS (99.8 ± 5.2%) than MBC (96.5 ± 5.4%), but both methods indicated good accuracy. Total P in invertebrates determined using the two methods was strongly linearly correlated (r = 0.96) with a..., This dataset compares body %P data of freshwater invertebrates measured by ICP-MS and by the molybdenum blue colorimetric assay. , , # Costanza-Robinson et al. invertebrate P methods comparison data

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9h1](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9h1)

## Description of the data and file structure

Body phosphorus data for freshwater benthic invertebrates associated with Costanza-Robinson et al. (Accepted) *Plos ONE.*

### Files and variables

#### File: Costanza\_Robinson\_et\_al\_Pcomp\_data.xlsx

**Description:** All data for standard reference materials and freshwater invertebrate samples used in the methods comparison. Some columns will contain NA values when that column is not pertinent to a given sample. For example, certified reference materials contain NA values for field sampling and taxonomic identification columns. All samples were not all used for the same set of analyses, so some %P columns and spike recovery columns will have NA values if that sample was not used in that analysis.

##### Variables

* Sample Type: Denotes whether the sample is a standard reference material...