Dinoflagellates, planktonic

As mentioned above we obtained most of the poison for our chemical and biological work from the Alaska butter clam. However our search for a dinoflagellate or any other poisonous organism in the water as a source of the poison in the clams was never definitely accomplished. In 1948, and in some years following, along with a survey for toxic butter clams in Southeastern Alaska by the staff at the Fishery Products Research Laboratory at Ketchikan, 1 collected plankton in areas where the clams were found to be toxic. Mouse assays of the plankton showed no toxicity. Microscopic examination of the water in these areas showed heavy growth of microscopic plankton but little or no evidence of... 

Except for sanguineum, the above named species represent cosmopolitan and frequently dominant epiphytic/benthic dinoflagel-lates in the Virgin Islands. Gymnodinium sanguineum is one of the few common planktonic species in the study area. All of these species are readily accessible to herbivorous fishes throughout the Virgin Island chain. 

Shellfish (filterfeeding mollusks) Mussels, clams, oysters, scallops Several kinds of toxin taken up from plankton (dinoflagellate) See below ... 

Blooming of dinoflagellates is a complex affair, contemplated in the paradox of plankton . That is, at the equilibrium, resource competition models suggest that the number of coexisting species cannot exceed the number of limiting resources. In contrast, within nature, more species can coexist. A rationalization of these phenomena, possibly solving the paradox, may be found in species oscillations and chaos, without the need of advocating external causes (Huisman 1999). 

Eukaryotic plants and cyanobacteria. Photosynthetic dinoflagellates, which make up much of the marine plankton, use both carotenoids and chlorophyll in light-harvesting complexes. The carotenoid peridinin (Fig. 23-29), which absorbs blue-green in the 470- to 550-nm range, predominates. The LH complex of Amphidinium carterae consists of a 30.2-kDA protein that forms a cavity into which eight molecules of peridinin but only two of chlorophyll a (Chi a) and two molecules of a galactolipid are bound (Fig. 23-29).268... 

Uye, S. and Takamatsu, K., Feeding interactions between planktonic copepods and red-tide dinoflagellates from Japanese coastal waters, Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 59, 97, 1990. 

Carreto, J. I., Carignan, M. O., Daleo, G., and De Marco, S. G., Occurrence of mycosporine-like amino acids in the red tide dinoflagellate Alexandrium excavatum. UV-photoprotective compounds , J. Plankton Res., 12, 909, 1990. 

Menden-Deuer S, Lessard EJ (2000) Carbon to volume relationships for dinoflagellates, diatoms and other protist plankton. Limnol Oceanogr 45 569-579... 

Tester, P.A., Turner, J, and Shea, D. 2000. Vectorial transport of toxins from the dinoflagellate Gymnodium breve through copepods to fish. Journal of Plankton Research 22, 47-61. 

Ostreopsis siamensis was first isolated by Schmidt in the Gulf of Siam, Thailand, in 1901 (Schmidt 1901). This dinoflagellate occurs in mat r tropical and subtropical areas of the world, mainly as epiphytic and less frequently as planktonic, and also in temperate areas during summertime. Until today, the presence of O. siamensis has been reported in the coastal waters of Japan (Yasumoto et al. 1987), New Zealand (Chang et al. 2000 Rhodes et al. 2000), Tasmania (Pearce et al. 2000), Spain, Italy (Vila et al. 2001 Penna et al. 2005), Greece (Aligizaki et al. 2005), and Tunisia (Turki 2005). 

---