Studies on the growth of riverainCladophora in culture

Summary

Techniques were developed for studying the effects of environmental factors on the growth in culture ofCladophora glomerata from flowing waters.Cladophora still attached to rocks was transferred from the river to a laboratory stream and incubated there for 4 days under standard conditions. Small pieces of this material were cut off, cleaned, and used as inocula for shake culture experiments. These experiments were mostly designed to test the effect of various agents which have been widely quoted, in literature based on field observations, as limiting the growth ofCladophora. The alga is particularly sensitive to copper and zinc among the metals tested, and to DOBS-055, a “soft” detergent, among the detergents tested. The experimental results support the hypothesis that the alga may occasionally be limited by high natural iron concentrations, but not that it is so sensitive to high temperature that this factor alone would often limit its growth in British rivers.