JPR Advance Access originally published online on November 22, 2005
Journal of Plankton Research 2005 27(12):1295-1300; doi:10.1093/plankt/fbi085
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SHORT COMMUNICATION |
First report of the cyanobacterium Aphanizomenon ovalisporum Forti in two Greek lakes and cyanotoxin occurrence
1 Department of Botany, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, PO Box 109, GR-541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece and 2 Department of Applied Chemistry and Microbiology, Viikki Biocenter, Helsinki University, PO Box 56, Helsinki, FIN-000 14, Finland
* Corresponding Author: lanaras{at}bio.auth.gr
Received June 1, 2005; accepted in principle August 25, 2005; accepted for publication October 7, 2005; published online November 22, 2005
Communicating editor: I.R. Jenkinson
Aphanizomenon ovalisporum is reported for the first time in Greece, in two warm, monomictic lakes. Aphanizomenon ovalisporum was dominant constituting 99 and 58% of the total cyanobacterial biomass in lakes Lysimachia and Trichonis, respectively. Trichomes were solitary (length 60700 µm), were narrowed slightly at the ends, had a few terminal hyaline cells and had cells containing gas vesicles (length 2.56.9, width 2.45.1 µm). Heterocytes, spherical or ellipsoidal (length 4.410.5, width 2.415.1 µm) and akinetes (length 16.027.8, width 6.015.9 µm) were located in the middle of the trichome. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis detected microcystinLR (MCLR) and a putative anabaenopeptin in the L. Lysimachia sample. The sestonic MCLR concentration was 0.9 µg L1. The origin of MCLR in L. Lysimachia is discussed. The other cyanobacteria present were Pseudanabaena sp. and Planktothrix mougeotii (1% of the total cyanobacterial biomass).