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The World of Protozoa, Rotifera, Nematoda and Oligochaeta

Ref ID : 1894

Nakamura Yasuo, Suzuki Shin-ya, and Hiromi Juro; Growth and grazing of a naked heterotrophic dinoflagellate, Gyrodinium dominans. Aquatic Microbial Ecology 9:157-164, 1995

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Growth and grazing rates of a naked heterotrophic dinoflagellate, Gyrodinium dominans [equivalent spherical diameter (ESD)= ca. 20 µm], were examined in batch cultures. Strains isolated from the Seto Inland Sea (Harima strain) and Tokyo Bay (Tokyo strain) in Japan were used for the experiments. Both strains grew well when fed amorphous materials (such as bacterial flocs with attached nanoflagellates and aggregates of a small diatom) and plankton species with ESD of 15 to 26 µm. The Tokyo strain also grew rapidly when fed small (ca. 5 µm) phytoplankton species at levels higher than 1x10E5 ml-1. However, rates of ingestion of Nephroselmis aff. rotunda (ESD=4.5 µm) by the Tokyo strain were too low to sustain rapid growth of G. dominans at natural levels of small (2 to 8 µm) flagellate abundance (<3x10E4 ml-1). Ingestion of Heterocapsa triquetra (ESD=15.3 µm) followed Michaelis-Menten kinetics with half-saturation constants of 820 and 180 ml-1 and maximum ingestion rates of 0.82 and 0.59 prey predator-1 hr-1 for the Harima and Tokyo strains, respectively. The clearance rates of both strains feeding on H. triquetra were about 2 orders of magnitude higher than those for N. aff. rotunda. These results indicate that G. dominans can play an important role in the decline of red tides caused by large (>15 µm) nanoflagellates such as Gymnodinium mikimotoi.