PARALEX 2010-2014

The dinoflagellate Alexandrium minutum is a plankton microalgae likely to proliferate and form red algal blooms. During those blooms, Alexandrium minutum produces crippling toxins that accumulate in filtering shellfish at such level that Humans can become seriously ill or even die from eating oysters and other shellfish contaminated with red tide toxin.

Toxic blooms of Alexandrium minutum abruptly appeared on the Brittany coastline by the end of the 1980s and got increasingly numerous up to 2001. Since then, this microalgae seems to regulate itself.

Roscoff DIOP Group has discovered that the marine dinoflagellates commonly responsible for toxic red tides are parasitized by other dinoflagellate species. Their observations in natural ecosystems suggest that although bloom-forming dinoflagellates may escape control by grazing organisms, they eventually succumb to parasite attack.

•    Those results got published in Science on the 21rst of November 2008

Our Marine Chemistry Research Group colaborates with DIOP Research Group during PARALEX Campaigns on two sites in Brittany.

Fig : Alexandrium minutum 3D life cycle

The Marine Chemistry Research group has been involved in the monitoring of physico-chemical parameters in the saewater column during the different campaigns of this research program on both sites (Penzé river and Rance river).

Thierry Cariou (FR2424)
Donatien de Rochefort
Marie Latimier (FR2424)
Eric Macé
Laura Meslet
Pascal Morin
Laure Sevin
Marc Vernet

4 Roscoff research teams (EBEA, DIOP, MAPP & Marine Chemistry), together with the Dinard Ifremer Center, have organised a conference for general public in Plouër-sur-Rance to explain the ongoing research program on the Rance river.