Life spans of planktonic foraminifers: New sight through sediment traps

• Main Authors: Nigam, R., Saraswat, R., Mazumder, A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Palaeontological Society of India 2003
• Subjects: planktonic foraminifera; foraminiferal species; Planktonic foraminifera
• Online Access: http://drs.nio.org/drs/handle/2264/448

Determinig the life spans of planktonic foraminifera is vital in view of their increasing use for palaeoclimtic studies. Till date all the estimates about life span of planktonic foraminifers are based on the extrapolation of growth rates obtained in culture experiments and range from a few days to a few weeks, varying widely. Here the use of sediment trap technique is proposed to get much better estimates of life spans of planktonic foraminifers. On the basis of sediment trap results, it is hypothesized that in general the life spans of planktonic foraminiferal species are of the order of few months instead of few days to few weeks, as reported earlier.