Search results for "Phagotrophy"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Mixotrophic phytoplankton dynamics in a shallow Mediterranean water body: how to make a virtue out of necessity
2018
Mixotrophy is a combination of photosynthesis and direct access to organic carbon sources, mainly through osmotrophy or phagotrophy. This strategy is adopted by several, phylogenetically distinct, phytoplankton groups and is commonly occurring in marine, brackish and freshwater ecosystems. Traditionally, it has been put in relation to both scarcity of inorganic nutrients and poor light conditions. However, we observed blooms of the mixotrophic, toxic haptophyte Prymnesium parvum in different periods of the year and under variable resources availability. The analysis of a 6.5-year data set of phytoplankton weekly records from a Sicilian shallow lake (Biviere di Gela, south-eastern Sicily) al…
Metabolic plasticity of mixotrophic algae is key for their persistence in browning environments
2022
Light availability is the main regulator of primary production, shaping photosynthetic communities and their production of ecologically important biomolecules. In freshwater ecosystems, increasing dissolved organic carbon concentrations, commonly known as browning, leads to lower light availability and the proliferation of mixotrophic phytoplankton. Here, a mixotrophic algal species (Cryptomonas sp.) was grown under five increasing dissolved organic carbon concentrations to uncover the plastic responses behind the success of mixotrophs in browning environments and their effect in the availability of nutritionally important biomolecules. In addition to the browning treatments, phototrophic, …