Bacterial carbon biomass calculated from biovolumes

A conversion factor (CF) for the transformation of bacterial biovolumes to carbon biomass was calculated from measurements of particulate organic carbon (POC) and bacterial biovolumes (BV) in a large number of bacterial growth experiments from both freshwater and marine systems. The mean bacterial biomass was 35 fg C cell -1 and the linear conversion factor was 105 fg C μm -3 . The best correlation was found with the curvilinear model POC = 243 x BV 0.56 .