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Processing samples of benthic marine diatoms from Mediterranean oligotrophic areas

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Abstract

The processing of benthic diatoms is tedious and involves several potentially damaging steps for cells. Although the preservation of siliceous frustules is of paramount importance in the implementation of biotic indices, only few studies quantified treatment-induced cell losses. We assumed that commonly used treatments may lead to mechanical (centrifugation, sedimentation, boiling, sonication and mounting in Naphrax) and chemical (cold H2O2 digestion) damages on diatoms. We analysed the potential adverse effects of these treatments and the cleaning efficiency of H2O2 and incineration in order to find out the most suitable technique to process lightly silicified Mediterranean populations. Results showed that successive resuspensions of material after each concentration treatment (sedimentation and centrifugation) and low speed centrifugation did not alter the physical integrity of frustules. In contrast, boiling and sonication exhibited adverse effects especially on the preservation of large frustules and Naphrax mounting proved to be the most damaging step whatever the size of diatoms. For cleaning treatments, incineration provided the most satisfactory results and acted on a non-selective way as opposed to hydrogen peroxide which led to either a large number of non-cleaned frustules or dissolved valves. Our recommendations for processing samples of lightly silicified Mediterranean benthic diatoms include the use of low-speed centrifugations, dehydration at room temperature, incineration and dry mounting.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Biondo, C. Sénéchal and STARESO research station staff for field and laboratory assistance and MSc N. Sturaro and anonymous referees for their critical comments on this work. This study was funded by the ARC-Rapid Assessment for the marine Coastal Environment 05/10-333, by the FRS-FNRS (Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research) and the French Belgian community. S.V. is funded by a Ph.D. grant from the ARC-RACE and G.L. is a Research Associate FRS-FNRS. This publication is MARE number 218.

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  1. MARE Centre, Laboratory of Oceanology, University of Liège, Sart Tilman B6c, 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Simon Vermeulen, Gilles Lepoint & Sylvie Gobert

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  1. Simon Vermeulen
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Correspondence to Simon Vermeulen.

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Vermeulen, S., Lepoint, G. & Gobert, S. Processing samples of benthic marine diatoms from Mediterranean oligotrophic areas. J Appl Phycol 24, 1253–1260 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-011-9770-4

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