Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii is a toxin-producing species of cyanobacteria that in autumn 2003 was recorded for the first time in three shallow (max. depth £5 m) Waikato lakes and a hydro-electric dam on the Waikato River, New Zealand. It formed water blooms at densities >100 000 cells/ml in Lakes Waahi and Whangape. Net rates of population growth >0.2 day–1 were recorded for C. raciborskii i...

Gloeotrichia echinulata is a bloom-forming cyanobacterium that is common in eutrophic lakes, and less prevalent but increasing in oligotrophic lakes. We used an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay analysis to test for the presence of the hepatotoxin microcystin-LR (MC-LR) in G. echinulata collected from an oligotrophic lake in central New Hampshire, USA. We found that G. echinulata contained MC-L...

The hypothesis that a large zooplankton herbivore, Daphnia pulex, can competitively reduce the abundance of resident zooplankton when colonizing a community of small species was tested in two lakes. When introduced to enclosures in eutrophic Larimore Pond, D. pulex decreased phytoplankton abundance by an order of magnitude, resulting in drastically reduced densities of Tropocyclops prasinus and...

Although the process of eutrophication is reasonably well understood in lakes, there is currently no conceptual understanding of how eutrophication develops in rivers. This issue is addressed here. A review of the main processes controlling the development of eutrophication in lakes has been carried out as a precursor to considering the effect in rivers. The importance of hydraulic flushing in ...

Chitin, which is a biopolymer of the amino sugar glucosamine (GlcN), is highly abundant in aquatic ecosystems, and its degradation is assigned a key role in the recycling of carbon and nitrogen. In order to study the significance of chitin decomposition in two temperate freshwater lakes with contrasting trophic and redox conditions, we measured the turnover rate of the chitin analog methylumbel...

Trophic assessments of 10 publicly-owned northeastern Ohio lakes including Aquilla, Baldwin, Findley, Hinckley, Hodgson (Muddy), Spencer, Lower Shaker, Upper Shaker, Virginia Kendall, and Wallace indicated that all were highly eutrophic. Criteria for these assessments were based on a Trophic State Index developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that incorporated epilimnetic levels o...

Mercury accumulation in fish is a global public health concern, because fish are the primary source of toxic methylmercury to humans. Fish from all lakes do not pose the same level of risk to consumers. One of the most intriguing patterns is that potentially dangerous mercury concentrations can be found in fish from clear, oligotrophic lakes whereas fish from greener, eutrophic lakes often carr...

Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) are a primary source of water quality degradation in eutrophic lakes. The occurrence of cyanoHABs is ubiquitous and expected to increase with current climate and land use change scenarios. However, it is currently unknown what environmental parameters are important for indicating the presence of cyanoHAB toxins making them difficult to predict or ...