Higher Plants as the Basis for Alternate Food Chains: Their Potentialities in Relation to Mass Culture of Microalgae

Abstract

Higher aquatic plants have mostly been underestimated with regard to their primary production potential and their importance as the basis of aquatic food chains. This neglect of macrophytes is especially obvious in limnology (Thienemann, 1926), where the research is concentrated almost exclusively on the pelagic vegetation, the phytoplankton. But in marine biology, as well, the investigation of higher plants (angiosperms) has received far less attention than the planktonic algae or the seaweeds. It is only in recent years that a change has come about (Gaevskaya, 1966). From World War II onward a steadily increasing number of publications pointed out that the role of higher plants in primary production in the shallow areas of fresh, brackish, and marine waters can definitely surpass pelagic primary production in such biotopes. Thus the importance of angiosperms for the great productivity of shallow waters has finally been elucidated.