Paper investigates the light effect on the content of chlorophyll a, carbon, nitrogen and the cell volume of dinoflagellates. Basic research in this area carried out on diatoms or on a limited number of dinoflagellates. Therefore research we carried out in this work was made on six dinoflagellates species: Prorocentrum cordatum Ostf. Dodge, P. micans Ehrenb., P. pusillum (Schiller) Dodge & Bibby, Gyrodinium fissum (Lev.) Kof. et Sw., Scrippsiella trochoidea (Stein) Loeb. and Heterocapsa triquetra (Ehrenb.) Stein. Algae were grown in a medium f/2 at the temperature of 19–22 °C and five different intensities of continuous light in the range of PAR 10–344 µE⋅m^-2⋅s^-1, microalgae were kept in the exponential growth phase. Decrease of chl. a per cell and per unit of carbon of 2 times for G. fissum and H. triquetra to 5 times for P. micans and P. pusillum was observed by increasing the light intensity. For most species the C/N ratio increased in 1.2–1.4 times. For each investigated light intensity a high degree of dependence of intracellular chl. a, organic carbon and nitrogen of the cell volume revealed. The equation based on our data was obtained that allowed us to calculate the content of carbon by volume of the dinoflagellate cells.

Keywords: dinoflagellates, chlorophyll a, the atomic ratio of organic carbon to nitrogen, the cell volume

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