Exotic flagellates of coastal North Sea waters

Abstract

Flagellate species have been shown to survive transocean passage by ballast water and the large dinoflagellate Gymnodinium catenatum was introduced from Japanese to Tasmanian waters in this way. Gymnodinium mikimotoi -better known as Gyrodinium aureolum -and Fibrocapsa japonica as well as Alexandrium leeii are good candidates to have been introduced recently. Species which seem to have been introduced recently into the North Sea but apparently are transported from adjacent seas by currents into the region are Gymnodinium chlorophorum and Alexandrium rninutum.

Genetic variation in bloom-forming ichthyotoxicPseudochattonellaspecies (Dictyochophyceae, Heterokonta) using nuclear, mitochondrial and plastid DNA sequence data

“…was observed in North Atlantic waters for the first time in water samples from 1993, despite its relatively large size and characteristic appearance when alive, it has been speculated that it was introduced to North Atlantic waters from a remote region in modern times by, for example, ballast water (Elbra¨chter, 1998;Hopkins, 2001).…”

Phylogeny and biogeography of the toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium

“…Until recently, most PSP outbreaks globally were caused by tamarensis complex species, while A. minutum was restrcted to the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, Taiwan, and New Zealand (Hallegraeff et aI., 1988). Since the mid 1980s, however, blooms of A. minutum or similar species have been responsible for PSP in southern Australia (Hallegraeff et aI., 1988;Oshima et aI., 1989), northern France (Belin, 1993), Spain (Franco et aI., 1994) and Ireland (Gross, 1989), and toxic populations have been identified in Malaysia (Usup et aI., 2002), the North Sea (Elbrachter, 1999;Hansen et aI., 2003;Nehring, 1998), Sweden (Persson et aI., 2000) and India (Godhe et aI., 2000;Godhe et aI., 2001). The range of toxic populations and the frequency of blooms also seem to be increasing in the Mediterranean (Honsell, 1993), Taiwan (Hwang et aI., 1999) and New Zealand (Chang et aI., 1997;Chang et aI., 1999).…”

A seasonal study of particulate organic matter composition and quality along an offshore transect in the southern North Sea

“…3 Raphidophyceae contribute much to the OM composition (Fig.2, Tab. 3), which is consistent with literature. Raphidophyceae are nowadays regularly found in the Dutch coastal waters (Vrieling et al, 1985;Elbrächter, 1999). Evidence of the presence of Euglenophyceae, Cryptomonads, Cyanobacteria, Prochlorophyceae, Chlorophyceae and Prasinophyceae were also found, but they were less abundant, and not at all stations nor at each sampling time (Fig.…”