Togashi Tatsuya, Sasaki Hironobu, Yoshimura Jin
Marine Biosystems Research Center, Chiba University, Kamogawa 299-5502, Japan.
Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Science, Chiba University, Chiba, 263-8522, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2014 Jan 20;4:3761. doi: 10.1038/srep03761.
An extremely rare alga, Aegagropila linnaei, is known for its beautiful spherical filamentous aggregations called Lake Ball (Marimo). It has long been a mystery in biology as to why this species forms 3D ball-like aggregations. This alga also forms two-dimensional mat-like aggregations. Here we show that forming ball-like aggregations is an adaptive strategy to increase biomass in the extremely limited environments suitable for growth of this alga. We estimate the maximum biomass attained by ball colonies and compare it to that attained by mat colonies. As a result, a ball colony can become larger in areal biomass than the mat colony. In the two large ball colonies studied so far, they actually have larger biomasses than the mat colonies. The uniqueness of Lake Balls in nature seems to be due to the rarity of such environmental conditions. This implies that the conservation of this alga is difficult, but important.
一种极其稀有的藻类——球藻（Aegagropila linnaei），以其美丽的球形丝状聚集体（称为“湖球”或“藻球”）而闻名。长期以来，在生物学领域一直存在一个谜团，即为什么这个物种会形成三维球状聚集体。这种藻类还会形成二维的垫状聚集体。在此我们表明，形成球状聚集体是一种适应性策略，可在适合该藻类生长的极端有限环境中增加生物量。我们估算了球状群体所能达到的最大生物量，并将其与垫状群体的生物量进行比较。结果发现，球状群体在单位面积生物量上可以比垫状群体更大。在迄今为止研究的两个大型球状群体中，它们实际上拥有比垫状群体更大的生物量。自然界中湖球的独特性似乎归因于这种环境条件的稀缺性。这意味着对这种藻类的保护虽困难，但却很重要。
