Saprophytic and phagocytic isolates of the colourless heterotrophic dinoflagellate Gyrodinium lebouriae Herdman

Extract

Nutritionally, there are three basic types of Dinophyceae: (1) free-living photosynthetic autotrophs; (2) parasitic heterotrophs living on or in other organanisms and (3) free-living phagocytic or chemosynthetic heterotrophs. Representatives of the first type, the free-living photosynthetic autotrophic species, have been extensively investigated at the fine-structural level (for a review see Dodge, 1971). There are fewer species of the second type, the parasitic Dinophyceae, but many of these have been investigated in the electron microscope (Cachon & Cachon, 1966, 1970, 1971a, b; Cachon et al. 1968; Soyer, 1969 c; Manier, Fize & Grizel, 1971; Siebert & West, 1974). The third type, the free-living heterotrophic Dinophyceae, probably comprises the greatest number of species in the class; as Kofoid & Swezy (1921) state ‘One cannot work with the marine unarmored Dinoflagellata for even a short time without being struck by the fact that the majority of the individuals observed show evidence of holozoic nutrition and that the number actually containing chromatophores is relatively small throughout the entire Dinoflagella’. While the free-living heterotrophic Dinophyceae comprise the largest proportion of the class they have been, by far, the most poorly studied at the fine structural level. Investigations on these organisms have been limited to a comprehensive study of Oxyrrhis marina (Dodge & Crawford, 1971a, b, 1974) plus studies on specific parts of Cryptothecodinium cohnii (Kubai & Ris, 1969; Pokorny & Gold, 1973) and Noctiluca miliaris (Afzelius, 1963; Soyer, 1968, 1969a, b; Zingmark, 1970).