In conclusion, the results reported herewith show a significant relationship between epifluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry, but coefficients of variation were considerably lower for bacterial counts estimated by flow cytometry than epifluorescence microscopy. Generally, the use of flow cytometry in marine microbiology reduces the processing time of the sample and increases the number of processed samples. Also, the use of this method provides more information about microbial community members, especially for Prochlorococcus, HNA and LNA bacterial groups (cells are not visible by epifluorescence microscopy). Thanks to flow cytometry, first data for abundances of Prochlorococcus, HNA and LNA bacteria were published, and this method increases the knowledge about microbial community.
