Cultivation trials of a selected benthic dinoflagellate

Abstract

The study on benthic dinoflagellates is still new in phycology. Benthic dinoflagellates can be found attached to seaweeds, rocks and sediment with the flagella modified for attaching to hard surfaces. Some of them are known to produce toxins and they can affect the seaweed culture industry. This study was an attempt to culture a selected benthic dinoflagellate in laboratory conditions by using different media and to compare their growth in all the culture media tested. The number of cells was recorded everyday and the growth rate was determined by using the graph of number of cell per 1 OμL versus culture age (day). Establishing the culture of benthic dinoflagellates is important for further detailed studies such as biomolecular aspects, phycotoxin, taxonomy and anatomy. Three culture media used in this study were ES-DK, f/2 medium and Soil Extract+ 90% seawater. These media were chosen as ES-DK is the culture medium used to maintain the benthic dinoflagellate culture in University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), f/2 medium is the culture medium that had shown good results in culturing a wide variety of microalgae and Soil Extract + 90% Seawater was chosen because it is the benthic dinoflagellates' natural habitat. Thus soil extract may provide the nutrients needed for their growth. Result shows that f/2 medium can maintain the culture until it reached 1033 cells while ES-DK reached 150 cells, while soil extract+ 90% Seawater can only keep the cells alive without replication. Thus, f/2 medium is suitable for mass culture and for maintaining mass culture stock while ES-DK is suitable to be used to study their morphology and growth phases. Soil Extract + 90% Seawater is suitable to be used in maintaining the newly-collected field samples while transferring them from the sampling site to the laboratory.