portrait

Description:

Pfiesteria (fist-ear-ee-a) small colourless dinoflagellate equatorial girdle in which one flagellum lies, another trailing. Probably misleading reports in the literature suggest that this organism has very polymorphic life cycles - held to be misleading because the case is based on non-pure cultures and supporting evidence includes images of taxa which clearly are related to other kinds of organisms. In certain areas within the US, this organism is held to be a major environmental threat because it is said to cause fish kills, but the less hysterical perspective is that the organism, with limited variation in form, may attack damaged tissue and eat it - hence the association with unhappy fish. Because of the issues of putative toxicity, correct identification needs expert input, which can be obtained from other sites such as IOC Harmful Algal Bloom Program.

Differential interference microscopy.

data on this strain.