Microcosm: Flask experiment of phytoplankton-bacteria interaction in a natural community using control and water-accommodated fraction (WAF) treatments; non-radioactive experiment; Imaging FlowCytobot

The effect of crude oil exposure was monitored by means of radio-labelled tracers, however, to track the physiological changes of phytoplankton, another experiment was run in parallel without radio-labelled tracers. Photosynthetic physiology parameters: chlorophyll a, Fv/Fm (photosynthesis efficiency), relative electron transfer rates (rate of photosynthesis), light harvesting ability, connectivity between photosynthetic units, and sigma (size of the phytoplankton antennae that harvest light) were monitored over short-term (0, 2, 4, and 8 hours) and long-term (0, 24, 48, and 72 hours) experiment.