As a good start for a new plankton year I had the pleasure of meeting Crucigenia mucronata in the Dutch waters. Quite a rare species, but easy to recognize because of the warts. As the name says - mucro (Latin) = point, wart. Size of the cells: 5x7,5 µm.It is mentioned on the Dutch TWN-list, so it must have been seen in the Netherlands earlier. Komárek and Fott (1983) list France, Guadeloupe...
Plankton
Planctonema lauterbornii Schmidle 1903
seems to be a species that occurs when the ecosystem is in stress (Leitão et al 2003, Song et la 2009). The Dutch TWN-list has 3 "preferred names" for Planctonema: 2 lauterbornii's and Planctonema subtilissimum. There is Planctonema lauterbornii Schmidle 1903, but then also Pl. lauterbornii sensu M. Watanabe, T. Hori et M. Akiyama 1986. I looked up the article of Watanabe & Co ...
Tychonema
Hmm, it's true, then. They are here. Tychonema's. On the Cyanobactria course in Czech Rebublic last August I was quite surprised to hear Prof. Komárek say that Tychonema is quite common in the northern lakes... As he, together with Anagnostidis, wrote in Süsswasserflora 19/2 (2005) they occur "in the plankton of northern, colder lakes, slightly eutrophicated". Found some in a northern lake. Tycho...
Pediastrum
Found this Pediastrum integrum C.W. Nägeli 1849 in a sample with almost nothing in it. And yes, Komárek and Jankovská (2001) tell that it's common in oligotrophic and dystrophic cold and clear large and small lakes as well as small peaty basins. Everything fine so far. What puzzled me was there also was P. angulosum (C.G. Ehrenberg 1834) ex G.G.A. Meneghini 1840, which Komárek and Jankovská...
Catalogue of the desmids of Ireland
Wonderful! To be found at AlgaeBase: http://www.algaebase.org/search/bibliography/detail/?biblio_id=47220
The big one
This big (68x80 µm) Cosmarium botrytis lightened up my day just before lunch break. It was cathed in a lake Kurtinjärvi in Kuusamo, in the north of Finland. West & West (1912) already mention, that it has been seen in Finland. A quite a common species, found all over. West & West describe 7 varieties of this species with "considerable amount of variability": paxillosporum, subtumidum, tum...
They still love Zooplankton!
In the newest Hydrobiologia (Volume 676, Number 1 / November 2011) there is a bunch of articles about zooplankton. Wonderful! "Cladocera crustaceans: sentinels of environmental change" Eggermont & Martens write in the preface. I do believe they are. Jeppesen et al plead for including zooplankton to the European Water Framework Directive. No objections heard from me. What makes me especially happy ...
Public alien observations
Finland’s environmental administration asks people to inform the authorities about their observations on alien species. In the Baltic Sea, that is. With more information on the species the authorities can plan the steps needed to be taken, if there are any. To make it as easy as possible, there is even a form on the net one can fill in in case of an alien observation. As far as I could find out, ...
Getting ready for the Baltic Sea
Visited Mrs. Terttu Finni in Helsinki yesterday. We had a fine day looking at the samples from the coastal waters of the brackish Baltic Sea with her the microscope. Went through the most common species and dicussed almost 50 taxa. I kind of like Chaetoceros-species. The first step towards counting Baltic Sea phytoplankton is taken.
The Finnish algae list
Last weeks Thursday and Friday we had the annual autumn meeting of the Finnish algologists. This time in Heureka, the Finnish Science Center in Vantaa, near Helsinki. Most of the time of the 15 or so algologists gathered went on checking the blue-greens on the national algae list: the names, volumes, taxonomy. A couple of totally new taxa was dealed with as well. We also discussed the exact meanin...