The East African soda lakes are known worldwide for their huge populations of lesser flamingos. Their phytoplankton community is often dominated by the cyanobacterium Limnospira fusiformis , the main food of lesser flamingos. In the early 2010s, the population of the cyanobacterium collapsed and the picoplanktic green alga Picocystis salinarum became dominant in Lake Nakuru. Consequently, lesser flamingos had to migrate to oth...

Picocystis salinarum is a globally widespread picoplanktonic green alga of saline lakes . This tiny alga has been recorded in four continents, and in some cases, it has become the dominant phytoplankton species. We examined the ecophysiology of a Kenyan strain of P. salinarum , collected from Lake Nakuru. The photosynthetic activity of the species was measured in seventy-two combinations of light intensity and temperature. The...

Summary Symbiosis of green algae with protozoa and invertebrates has been studied for more than 100 years. Endosymbiotic green algae are widely distributed in ciliates (e.g. Paramecium , Stentor, Climacostomum, Coleps, Euplotes ), heliozoa (e.g. Acanthocystis ) and invertebrates (e.g. Hydra , Spongilla ), and have traditionally been identified as named or unnamed species of Chlorella Beij. or Zoochlorella K. Brandt or referred...