| Summary: | A method for dislodging cyanobacterial communities from feather mosses with the use of sonication has been tested with the purpose of applying it in a running PhD project at the University og Iceland that is assessing the diversity, abundance and N-fixating activity of moss associated cyanobacteria on feather mosses in arctic and subarctic ecosystems. The method was tested in order to be able to assess the abundance of cyanobacterial cells with the use of a counting chamber. The results from this experiment was however negative, as the sonication lysed the cyanobacterial cells, losing the fluorescence of the cells needed to identify them. The dispersion of the cyanobacterial communities along the moss shoots was also assessed, and the results showed most abundance below the apex, towards and in the non-photosynthetic part of the plant. These results are similar with results obtained by Björn Solheim and Matthias Zielke, and may be attributed to the fact that oxygen inhibits nitrogenase, and that the cyanobacteria is then found in parts of the moss where oxygen production is low.
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