a heterotrophic nanoagellate grazing on the toxic.pdfVIP

Ann. Limnol. - Int. J. Lim. 45 (2009) 23–28 Available online at: EDP Sciences, 2009 DOI: 10.1051/limn/09004 A heterotrophic nanoflagellate grazing on the toxic Cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa Cui Yan, Jian-Hong Li*, Ju-Jiao Li, Jin Wang and Yong-Ping Weng Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Biodiversity and Biotechnology, Life Sciences College, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, P. R. China Received 9 October 2008; Accepted 18 December 2008 Abstract – Cyanobacterial blooms cause extensive ecological damages in aquatic environments. Hetero- trophic nanoflagellates (HNF) play an important role in controlling the populations of cyanobacteria in natural water bodies. In this study, we report a HNF, NF-WJ05, which grazes efficiently on the toxic cyano- bacterium Microcystis aeruginosa strain PCC 7806. The morphological characteristics of the nanoflagellate observed by optical microscope and confocal microscope showed that NF-WJ05 could be a Paraphysomonas. The sequences of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of rDNA including the 5.8S rDNA region was determined and compared with sequences available in databases. The 5.8S rDNA sequence showed a high degree of similarity to those belonging to species of Chromophyta. However, sequences similar to that of its ITS were not found in the databases. Several environmental factors affecting the grazing efficiency of NF-WJ05 on cyanobacteria were evaluated. The more suitable conditions for grazing were 30 xC and pH 5.0 with stirring. Ammonia inhibited the grazing, whereas low concentrations of phenol increased the grazing rate