Development of database on harmful plankton image and related publication on their ecophysiological characters

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During the Project, Fukuyo and Furuya observed plankton samples and Matsuoka observed cyst samples, identifying dinoflagellates in the samples by making detailed morphological description and taking photographs on various morphological characteristics. Total number of photographs became more than 1500, while several important species are taken often. Among them, photographs that show morphological features good for species identification were taken into the computer data-base by a scanner. The accumulated data were reorganized and opened to the public from home-page of the main researcher in the world wide web system (dinos.anesc.u-tokyo.ac.jp) under the name of "Atlas of Dinoflagellates". The data were also reorganized and saved in CD-ROM, in which about 200 species including 15 Prorocentrales, 28 Dinophysiales and 77 Gonyaulacales with a list of reference publications to show scientific evidences on their toxicity and harmfulness were saved. Among them, more data were prepared for toxic and harmful species such as 20 species of Alexandrium, most of which produce PSP toxins, and 30 species of unarmored dinoflagellates including Gymnodinium which cases red tides with harmful consequences. One photograph was usually not enough to show morphological characteristics of each species and sometimes more than ten photographs taken from various angles were used. Reference publications showing scientific evidence on their toxicity and harmfulness were collected by Ogata and also saved in the CD-ROM. The CD'ROMS were mailed to scientists studying harmful algae in the world, and distributed to participants of the 9th International Conference on harmful Algal Blooms held in Tasmania. Australia in February 2000. As scientists who have difficulty in approaching to computer system wanted to have printed booklets of the Atlas, a half of photographs from the computer data-base were chosen and printed with the final report of the project.