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The name scintillon was first used to describe cytoplasmic particles isolated from a bioluminescent species of dinoflagellate that were able to produce a flash of light in response to a decrease in pH. [4] Scintillons were first observed in L. polyedra by fluorescence microscopy, [5] where
Some dinoflagellates produce resting stages, called dinoflagellate cysts or dinocysts, as part of their lifecycles; this occurs in 84 of the 350 described freshwater species and a little more than 10% of the known marine species. [9] [10] Dinoflagellates are alveolates possessing two flagella, the ancestral condition of bikonts.
Pyrocystis fusiformis is a non-motile, tropical, epipelagic, marine dinoflagellate (flagellate microorganisms), reaching lengths of up to 1 millimetre (0.039 in). P. fusiformis display bioluminescence when disturbed or agitated. In coastal marine waters, this dinoflagellate causes glowing effects after dark.
Dinoflagellates are microbial eukaryotes that link bioluminesce and toxin production in algal blooms. [39] They use a luciferin-luciferase reaction to create a blue light emission glow. [ 40 ] There are seventeen major types of dinoflagellate toxins, in which the strains, Saxitoxin and Yessotoxin, are both bioluminescent and toxic.
A light micrograph of an ocelloid-containing dinoflagellate. The nucleus is marked n, the ocelloid is indicated with a double arrowhead, and a posterior cell extension is indicated with an arrow; scale bar = 10 μm.
Pyrodinium have caused more human illnesses and fatalities than any other dinoflagellates that cause Paralytic Shellfish Toxin or PST. [4] It was initially widely believed that the compressum variety was toxic and found in the Pacific while the bahamense variety was nontoxic and found in the Atlantic, but a 1972 toxic algal bloom of Pyrodinium bahamense in Papua New Guinea [5] showed this was ...
Early research resulted in the hypothesis that Pfiesteria is a predatory dinoflagellate that acts as an ambush predator, utilizing a "hit and run" feeding strategy.Release of a toxin paralyzes the respiratory systems of susceptible fish, such as menhaden, causing death by suffocation.
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a molecule or an atom that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength , and therefore a lower photon energy , than the absorbed radiation.