Periphyton Community Composition Research Articles

The composition and ecology of periphyton communities in freshwaters. II. Inter-relationships between water chemistry, phytoplankton populations and periphyton populations in a shallow lake and associated experimental reservoirs (‘Lund tubes’)

Water chemistry, phytoplankton populations and periphyton populations on Potamogeton pectinatus, have been compared in a shallow, brackish lake, Hickling Broad, and in two enclosed, 20 m diameter butyl rubber reservoirs, placed in it. The seasonal changes of periphyton on Hippuris vulgaris and Myriophyllum spicatum in the lake have also been examined. The lake has been made more eutrophic by agricultural land drainage and roosting gull populations, the tubes to a greater extent by gulls perching on their rims. The water in the tubes became persistently dominated by colonial blue-green algae, a spring diatom pulse was absent, and severe nitrogen limitation was found. Periphyton on P. pectinatus in the tubes was scanty. In the lake, however, though phytoplankton chlorophyll a levels were lower, an alternation of spring diatom and summer colonial blue-green algae was recorded. Nitrogen limitation was less severe in the lake and abundant periphyton crops, mainly of diatoms, developed on P. pectinatus and to a...

The composition and ecology of periphyton communities in freshwaters

The surfaces of aquatic plants are not metabolically inert, yet much evidence seems to suggest that they exert little influence on the composition of the periphytic algal communities associated with them. Other evidence indicates a specificity of the algal communities to particular macrophyte species. Evidence is given here, from a variety of studies, that the influence of host type in determining periphyton community composition is greatest in infertile lakes, but, that in progressively more fertile water, external environmental factors become more important.