Dinoflagellate Pyrocystis fusiformis

[陳彥吟]

Hi, 

I have two problems wanna know.

First, Can I grow Pyrocystis fusiformis with any sea plant together?

Second, When Noctiluca booming in the ocean, it is non photosynthesized and absurd Oxygen , but Pyrocystis fusiformis is photosynthesized. So can I dump panty of Pyrocystis fusiformis into the sea water? for balance them..

[Nathan McCorkle]

Hmm, well Noctiluca scintillans is non-photosynthetic, but P.
fusiformis is a mixotroph. Wikipedia says N. scintillans will eat
other dinoflagellates, so increasing the concentration of 'dinos' with
P. fusiformis may increase the chance of N. scinitillans eating them.
That would just mean you'd need more P. fusiformis.

Aside from that, I could see the concentration of N scintillans being
high enough to block light enough to slow P. fusiformis'
photosynthesis down quite a lot. I do not know if they would revert to
a oxygen-based metabolism, where they would also start depleting
available oxygen. I don't know, but I do know that this sort of
switchover of metabolism types is present in other organisms (i.e.
E.coli is a facultative anaerobe). (It looks like facultative
phototroph may be a term used in the literature).

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Also, Pyrocystis is quite sensitive to pollution, and Noctiluca blooms tend to generate ammonia. So chances are that Noctiluca would kill the Pyrocystis, and then eat it...

Patrik

[陳彥吟]

thanks for reply.

does anyone knows can  I grow Pyrocystis fusiformis with any sea plant together?

在 2014年12月7日星期日UTC下午7时30分44秒，陳彥吟写道：

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

No idea. I do know that contamination with cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) is one way to kill Pyrocystis, since the cyanos will typically grow much faster than the Pyrocystis and will easily outcompete them for any nutrients.

I don't see why Pyrocystis couldn't live together with a plant. But it may be hard to find a plant that is not already contaminated with lots of other bugs as well...

Patrik