Parasitic Dinoflagellates of Marine Ciliates: Their Significance in Microbial Food Webs

海洋纤毛虫的寄生甲藻：它们在微生物食物网中的意义

• 批准号: 8911316
• 负责人: Donald Coats
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Chesapeake Research Consortium Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1990
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1990-03-01 至 1993-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8911316&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Parasitic; Dinoflagellates; Marine; Ciliates; Their

Ciliated protozoa are widely recognized as an important component of planktonic communities and are believed to play a pivotal role in marine microbial food webs. The importance of ciliates as consumers of phytoplankton and, to a lesser extent, bacterioplankton has been well studied and is now generally accepted. Larger zooplankton are usually viewed as the predominant consumers of ciliates, yet there is little evidence that grazing by metazoa has a substantial impact on ciliate populations. Recent studies of the parastiic dinoflagellate Duboscquella cachoni and its tintinnine host Eutintinnus pectinis in Chesapeake Bay indicate that parasitism can have a significant impact on host abundance in coastal environments where E. pectinis densities are sufficiently high to support epizootic infections. Whether parasitism has a strong influence on other estuarine species or on ciliates in the open ocean where host densities are considerably lower is uncertain. The importance of parasitism to the fate of the ciliate protozooplankton in Chesapeake Bay will be evaluated through a combination of field studies to determine host-parasite abundance, species composition, parasite life histories and generation times.

纤毛原生动物被广泛认为是浮游生物群落的重要组成部分，在海洋微生物食物网中起着关键作用。纤毛虫作为浮游植物的消耗者，以及在较小程度上作为浮游细菌的消耗者，其重要性已经得到了充分的研究，并且现在已被普遍接受。较大的浮游动物通常被认为是纤毛虫的主要消费者，然而几乎没有证据表明后生动物的放牧对纤毛虫种群有实质性的影响。最近对切萨皮克湾（Chesapeake Bay）寄生鞭毛藻Duboscquella cachoni及其寄生宿主eutintinus pectinis的研究表明，在沿海环境中，寄生可以对宿主丰度产生重大影响，在这些环境中，果胶绦虫的密度足够高，可以支持动物传染病。寄生是否对其他河口物种或宿主密度相当低的开放海洋中的纤毛虫有强烈影响尚不确定。寄生对切萨皮克湾纤毛虫原生浮游动物命运的重要性将通过结合实地研究来评估，以确定寄主-寄生虫丰度、物种组成、寄生虫生活史和世代。