Abstract
Blooms of toxic phytoplankton, so called harmful algal blooms, are natural phenomena in marine environments, but during the last decades they have increased in frequency with anthropogenic impacts such as coastal eutrophication as likely contributing factors. Despite being fundamental to phytoplankton growth, increased availability of inorganic nutrients cannot fully account for the formation of many blooms, especially dinoflagellate blooms. Relative maximal growth rate is generally lower for dinoflagellates than for other phytoplankton of similar size and dinoflagellates are generally poor competitors for nutrients. Despite this, dinoflagellates constitute one of the dominant groups among the phytoplankton. There is growing evidence that chemical mediation of ecological interactions, e.g. chemical defenses and allelopathic agents, are important in explaining the competitive ability of dinoflagellates. The proposed project is a continuation of my previous Formas-project on the chemical ecology of toxic dinoflagellates. The objective is to follow up pioneering results on grazer-induced toxin production in dinoflagellates through the identification of the inducing cues (elicitors) by combining a bioassay-guided fractionation approach with metabolomic techniques. Using the same procedure we will also aim to identify the unknown allelopathic compounds that have been shown to be exuded from dinoflagellates, with strong negative effects on many naturally co-occurring organisms.
Sweden