Multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot of plankton community composition during the 2009/2010 C. polykrikoides blooms as quantified via microscopy and flow cytometry. Two dimensional ordinations produced from 4th-root transformed,
Bray–Curtis similarity matrices are presented with samples delineated by bloom (dark circles) and non-bloom (open squares). In addition to the MDS plot for the total plankton community (A), plots for the plankton community without C. polykrikoides (B) and without C. polykrikoides and picoplankton (picoeukaryotes, cyanobacteria, and heterotrophic bacteria) (C) are also shown. ‘2D Stress’ indicates how faithfully the high-dimensional relationships among the samples are
represented in the 2-d ordination plots.