Arsenic cycling in marine phytoplankton: The importance of representative experiments

Phytoplankton form the base of most marine food-webs (Humborg et al. 2000) and thus are believed to play key roles in the cycling of arsenic in marine ecosystems (Maher et al. 2009). The majority of these roles, however, currently remain unknown due to the use of environmentally unrealistic experimental set-ups. This paper aims to illustrate differences in arsenic uptake, metabolism and species formation by marine phytoplankton resulting from changes in experimental set-up, with a view to making results more environmentally valid.