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Natural Product Discovery with LC-MS/MS Diagnostic Fragmentation Filtering: Application for Microcystin Analysis
Published on: May 31, 2019
The low TN:TP ratio, a cause or a result of Microcystis blooms?
Liqiang Xie1, Ping Xie, Sixin Li
1Donghu Experimental Station of Lake Ecosystems, State Key Laboratory for Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology of China, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China.
Abstract:
An enclosure experiment in the shallow, subtropical Lake Donghu, China, was performed in the summer of 2001 to examine the effect of TN:TP (total phosphorus) ratios and P-reduction on the occurrence of Microcysitis blooms. The treatments were performed with enough amounts of N but with different amounts of P in the water column and sediment. Microcystis blooms occurred in the enclosures either with an initial TN:TP <29 or TN:TP>29 where the nutrients (N, P) were high enough. Microcysitis blooms never occurred in the treatments with low P concentration in spite of the presence of sufficient N. The P-rich sediments served as an important source for the P supply in the water column, and such a process was activated greatly by the outburst of Microcystis blooms which pumped up selectively P from the sediments and thus decreased the TN:TP ratios. Therefore, the low TN:TP ratio is not a cause but rather a result of Microcystis blooms.
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