Bingo!

Just started to take a look at the Baltic Sea phytoplankton for real. And in the first field of view I see this funny thing, that you would not see in the fresh water samples:

Well, this is perhaps a more estetically justified photo of the same thing:

Now you see only the skeleton.

This is Ebria tripartita (J.H.K. Schumann, 1867) E.J. Lemmermann, 1899, 25x30 µm.

Ok, I admit. It's not phytoplankton. It's a heterotrophic flagellate, a member of "an enigmatic group of eukaryotes with an unclear phylogenetic position" as Hoppenrath & Leander (2006) so elegantly put it. But it is counted in the phytoplankton biomonitoring, so I accept it.

The strange thing with this species is that it has an endoskeleton. So it's a bit like us, humans. Also the name, which has it's origin in the latin word "ebrius" meaning "drunken", sounds -at least in the Finnish ears - very human.

But then again it has other features that resemble Dinoflagellates, like the nucleus, on the other hand it has features that makes one think of golden algae. Even for the taxonomists this has been most confusing. Ebria has been wandering across the taxonomic field, from one corner to the other, like not many other species have. A nice description of these adventures can be read in Hoppenrath & Leander (2006), who finally placed the species in protista, in the division Cercozoa.

Ebria tripartita is a species, that has a tremendous long history. It has been found in the sediments of the Baltic, in the depths that correspond with time some 120 000 years ago (Korhola & Grönlund, 1999). Yes. 120 000.

And not only is it widespread in time, it actually swims all over the world too (Tomas (ed.) 1997, Hoppenrath & Leander 2006).





Literature:
Ikävalko, Johanna (1998). Further observations on Flagellates within sea ice in northern Bothnian Bay, the Baltic Sea. Polar Biol 19: 323-329.

Korhola, Atte & Grönlund, Tuulikki (1999) Observations of Ebria tripartita (Schumann) Lemmermann in Baltic sediments. Journal of Paleolimnology 21: 1–8.

Hoppenrath, Mona & Leander, Brian S. (2006) Ebriid Phylogeny and the Expansion of the Cercozoa. Protist, Vol. 157, 279—290.

H. R. Preisig (1994) Siliceous structures and silicification in flagellated protists. Protoplasma 181: 29- 42.

Carmelo R. Tomas (ed.) (1997). Identifying marine phytoplankton. Academic Press. 858 p.

The Baltic Dinoflagellates

Spent Friday in the capitol, Helsinki. Visited Dr. Anke Kremp, a senior researcher at the Marine Research Centre/Modelling and Innovations Unit of the at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and listened with joy to all the things she had to tell about the Dinoflagellates in the Baltic Sea: the species recorded there, identification, taxonomy and the recent changes in taxonomy.

Because of the brackish water in the Baltic Sea and the gradual changes of salinity along the Finnish coast the species assemblage has its very own character. A checklist of the Baltic phytoplankton was published in revised form in 2004 by Guy Hällfors - a list that is very useful, not least because it has a very extensive list of synonyms, older names of the species. The taxonomy of Dinoflagellates has changed a lot since 2004 and because Hällfors "tried to avoid the inflation of higher taxa", this publication in not The One for the up-to-date names. For more recent names one can look at the wonderful The Center of Excellence for Dinophyte Taxonomy.

In Hällfors' Checklist we find 83 species that are recorded in the Finnish parts of the Baltic sea, that is the Northern Baltic Proper, the Gulf of Finland, the Archipelago Sea, The Botnian Sea and the Botnian Bay. Most of them are in the orders Peridiniales (31) and Gymnodiniales (29).

Only 83 species. It should then not be extremely difficult to learn to know most of them. On the paper at least. In lugol samples the visibility of the critical features of Dinoflagellates is, of course, somewhat limited.

If one looks very carefully, who knows one finds some new ones too? :) But before doing the dance of joy in a state of euphoria it's better to contact a real expert. I'm looking forward to getting to know the Baltic Dino's better!

Biodiversity Heritage Library

What a wonderful place to be, this BHL! Here they have quite nice quality of pictures too. Just take a look at the original drawing of Microcystis parasitica. Not bad.

You can search in many different ways: General / Books/Journals / Authors / Subjects / Scientific Names / Citation Finder (BETA) or browse by Titles | Authors | Subjects | Map | Year | Collections. Searched for Microcystis parasitica and got 21 publications! With a direct link to the PAGE where this species was mentioned. Unbelievable! And it's fast. Or maybe it's just that the rest of the village is not hanging on the net right now...

They also have a Facebook site, where they say that their Mission is "The participating libraries have over two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers, and students in their home institutions and throughout the world."

I love you. ♥

BioTar

A new interesting project has started in Finland: BioTar - Development of biological monitoring methods for the effects of the use of peat lands. The abbreviation BioTar comes from the words Biological, of course and Tarkkailu (=monitoring). The ending "-tar" means a female person in Finnish, so altogether the name gives an impression - at least to this Finnish mind - of a green, fairylike spirit leading the study.

The aim of the study, that takes place between 2011 and 2014, is to find new, innovative and cost effective methods to estimate the the ecological state of the water near peat lands. I wonder if they have included desmids in their list of interesting indicators? Desmids are often very sensitive for changes in, for example, electrical conductivity, which will probably occur if someone begins to harvest peat. In the Netherlands desmids has been used as indicators for Water Framework Directive, take a look at http://www.koemanenbijkerk.nl/uploads/poster-sieralg.pdf.

The study will be done by the Finland’s environmental administration and the university of Oulu. The ones skilled in the Finnish language can find more information on http://www.ymparisto.fi/default.asp?contentid=404440&lan=FI.

Euglenaria

Well, this is getting difficult! What we till now on were happy and content to call Euglena actually includes two groups of organisms, that have to be placed in two different genera: Euglena and the new Euglenaria. Euglenaria means Euglena-like.

And they certainly are, Euglena-like. For Euglenaria's are morphologically indistinguishable from the "old" Euglena's. The difference of these taxa lies in the genes, far beyond the resolving power of the microscope.

The difficulty for a regular plankton counter is, that if one can't identify a taxon to a specific Euglena-species, one has to jump one stick upwards on the taxonomic ladder and call the taxon Euglenophyceae. This is something a true algae counter does not like.

So say farewell to these species, that earlier could have been called Euglena ssp, but now have to be referred as Euglenophyceae:

It's frustrating, because they are clearly not Strombomonas or Phacus, for example, which are other genera in the Class Euglenophyceae. It would be satisfying to be able to make this difference clear in the algae lists too. But what to do? Make a notation, of course. But further? Call them Euglenophyceae Euglena vetus?

Literature:
Eric W. Linton, Anna Karnkowska-Ishikawa, Jong Im Kim, Woongghi Shin, Mathew S. Bennett, Jan Kwiatowski, Bozena Zakrys, and Richard E. Triemer (2010). Reconstructing Euglenoid Evolutionary RelationshipsusingThreeGenes: Nuclear SSU and LSU,and Chloroplast SSU rDNA Sequences and the Descriptionof Euglenaria gen. nov.
(Euglenophyta). Protist, Vol.161,603–619, October 2010.