Know Your Algae

Ceratium hirundinella It is a fresh water dinoflagellate generally seen in oligotrphic waters.  Oligotrophic waters are very rare and they are unpolluted without minerals or less minerals. These are indicator organisms for pollution free waters. Eutrophic waters are common but they are polluted. There are very few oligotrophic lakes in India.  One is amidst a forest in Maharastra and another is at Kodaikanal - Berigium Lake ,Berigium forest range under the control of forest dept. Even Dal and Manasarovar Lake is polluted. The organism Ceratium  a genus that is a very common genus in marine and freshwater bodies. They develop apical and antapical horns , here three antapical horns and one apical horn. The formation of horns is an adaptive feature of the organism against predators. It is an autotrohic organism evidenced by the green colour it shows  because many dinoflagellates are heterotrophic and show animal like features.

Dinophysis indica Srinivasan This is a new species collected and identified by me  from Bay of Bengal, INDIA. It was published in Nova Hedwigia Beihefte  on January 1996. The following is about my first paper on this species and other new records from Indian Ocean.

Dinoflagellates are an interesting and controversial group of algae that has been classified both under ICBN and ICZN .  Because some of them are autotrophic and others are heterotrophic and feed like animals.  They are harmful in the sense when they form toxic blooms and release neurotoxins which get biomagnified through food chain and affect human. The organism shown below is Dinophysis favus a heterotroph , non toxic collected from Bay of Bengal 2 decades ago. It is an unicellular organism showing highly reduced epitheca and enlarged hypotheca. The whole body is covered by small net like structures called areolae which also posses trichocysts pores will emit trichocysts when a predator(zooplankton) comes near to it.