MOLECULAR STUDIES OF KARENIA MIKIMOTOI (DINOPHYCEAE) FROM THE CELTIC SEA REGION ...

• Main Author: Al-Kandari, Manal A.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of Plymouth 2012
• Subjects: Harmful Algae; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.24382/3807; https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/1088

K. mikimotoi has been classified under many names and has been mis-assigned to different species and genera in the North Atlantic and Pacific because of its morphological similarities to other Gymnodinoid species. It is now known to be widely distributed, but there remain unresolved questions about whether K. mikimotoi was introduced into the North Sea from Japanese waters, or whether it has always inhabited this region and been erroneously classified as Gymnodinium spp. or has been a part of the hidden flora prior to be recognised in a bloom off the Norwegian coast in 1966. To address questions about geographical genetic variation within K. mikimotoi and broader issues about its biogeography it was deemed important to develop a suitable diagnostic molecular marker that could then be used to monitor the presence/absence of different K. mikimotoi ecotypes over long time scales in European waters. This study showed that the partial rDNA LSU (D1-D2) was too conserved to separate the different strains of K. ...