Planktonic centric diatoms from the Eastern Alps: morphology, biogeography and ecology

Werner Kofler,Eugen Rott

doi:10.35535/pfsyst-2021-0001

Abstract

Supplementary files 01_Supplement_Fig1_LM_fin.jpg 01_SuppLement_Fig2_LindaviaAustriaca.jpg 01_Supplement_Table1FIN.xlsx 01_Supplementum Table2FINB.docx

Highlights

Centric diatoms are common elements of phytoplankton in many types of lakes, ponds and artificial water bodies in the Eastern Alps from the lowlands to the highest mountains
Most are arranged along the trophic range axis in the upper sectors with two exceptions, lake 3 and lake 19, with both showing a wider. This taxonomic, morphology and ultrastructure based investigation of 26 water bodies of the Eastern Alps showed an interesting diversity of centric diatoms, altogether more than 30 species from nine genera, the sampling scheme was somewhat biased by more frequent sampling in the W
How do our findings relate to comparable regional studies of centric diatoms? a broader study from Hungarian rivers initially seems unlikely to be comparable, but it showed some higher richness (>40 taxa) and an unexpected high portion of shared taxa when taxonomic changes were taken into consideration

Summary

Introduction

Centric diatoms are common elements of phytoplankton in many types of lakes, ponds and artificial water bodies (reservoirs) in the Eastern Alps from the lowlands to the highest mountains This contribution focuses on lower altitude areas close to human settlements where seasonal development of centric diatoms shows a preference for the mixing periods in spring and autumn (cell aggregates, chain-forming taxa and large unicells) and minor peaks during stagnation periods in summer (small unicells) (Reynolds 1984; Rott 1984; Pipp & Rott 1995). Progress in studies of both morphological and ultrastructural features, combined with molecular markers identifying the genetic relationships of taxa, have led to a world-wide redefinition of the Cyclotella-species complex and the establishment of the new genera Lindavia (Nakov et al 2015) and Pantocsekiella (Ács et al 2016) This is why the taxonomic affiliations related to centrics from the Eastern Alps (for Austria see Wunsam et al 1995) require some updating and adjustment

Methods

Results

Conclusion