Towards HAB-Controlling Technology: Studying Parasitoid-Dinoflagellate Interactions on Individual- and Population-Scales

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are naturally occurring seasonal algal blooms which can have major negative impacts on human activities and health in coastal areas.

While the factors triggering these high biomass blooms has received much attention in the last decades, far less is known about what causes blooms to terminate.

Parasitoid infection of dinoflagellates may play a major role in the termination of HABs along the Balearic and Catalan coasts; however, very little is known about the biological or the biophysical mechanisms controlling parasitoid infection in dinoflagellates, nor how prevalent parasitoids are in natural dinoflagellate populations.

The focus of this project is to unravel the interactions between parasitoids and dinoflagellates and the cellular and population levels to determine how parasitoids might be used to control HABs.

I will accomplish this by: (1) studying the abundance of parasitoids and dinoflagellates of natural phytoplankton assemblages during bloom and non-bloom conditions in Cala Santanyí (Mallorca); (2) conducting a series of microfluidic experiments to study the biophysics, behaviors of and interactions between individual parasitoids, host cells, and healthy dinoflagellates; (3) modeling the interactions between dinoflagellates and parasitoids to determine the concentration of parasitoids necessary to control HABs along; and, (4) validating the model results using a series of microcosm experiments.

By studying the biophysical and behavioral interactions between dinoflagellates and parasitoids at both individual- and population-based scales, the long-term goal of this project is to exploit these interactions as an effective, environmentally-friendly method to control HABs near the Balearic Islands and the Catalan coast.