As a good start for a new plankton year I had the pleasure of meeting Crucigenia mucronata in the Dutch waters. Quite a rare species, but easy to recognize because of the warts. As the name says – mucro (Latin) = point, wart.
Size of the cells: 5×7,5 µm.
It is mentioned on the Dutch TWN-list, so it must have been seen in the Netherlands earlier. Komárek and Fott (1983) list France, Guadeloupe (who has been there collecting algae!?), India and Iowa in the USA as places where it has been recorded. They also tell us that the species like eutrophic water.
In Algaebase we can see that also Spain and Portugal can be added to this list of places of observation. Probably Germany too, because the Dutch TWN-list mentions as literature for this species also Tsarenko’s and Krienitz’s study on the coccal green algae of lake Tollensee, Germany. Unfortunately I don’t have this article. Yet.
In Europe the species is further also recorded at least in Poland (Kozak et al 2007). It is not on the Finnish phytoplankton list.
Some surfing on the net gave also result in Taiwan.
Have you seen this little fellow?
Literature
Cambra Sánchez, J., Álvarez Cobelas, M. & Aboal Sanjurjo, M. (1998). Lista florística y bibliográfica de los clorófitos (Chlorophyta) de la Península Ibérica, Islas Baleares e Islas Canarias. pp. 1-614. Burgos: Asociación Española de Limnología.
Komárek, J. & Fott, B. (1983): Chlorophyceae (Grünalgen). Ordnung: Chlorococcales. – In: G. Huber-Pestalozzi (†). Das Phytoplankton des Süßwassers. Systematik und Biologie. 7. Teil, 1. Hälfte. In: Elster, H.-J. & Ohle, W. (red.). Die Binnengewässer. Einzeldarstellungen aus der Limnologie und ihren Nachbargebieten. Band XVI. E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung (Nägele u. Obermiller), Stuttgart. X + 1044 pp., incl. 253 pls. ISBN 3-510-40023-2.
Kozak, A., Gołdyn R., Tymek, K. (2007). Long-term changes in the phytoplankton of a shallow storage reservoir. International Journal of Oceanography and Hydrobiology. Vol. XXXVI, Supplement 1. (87-93)
Tsarenko, P.M. & Krienitz, L. (1997). The flora of coccal green algae of Lake Tollensee and its tributaries (Baltic Lake District, Germany). – Archiv für Hydrobiologie / Supplementband 120, Algological Studies 86: 91-106.