Identification of Prymnesium parvum through Bio-Optical Signatures

Merissa Ludwig

Advisor - Dr. Daniel Roelke, Mentor - Reagan Errera

Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

Texas A&M University

Harmful algal blooms are a growing problem throughout the world and have drawn the attention of many scientists.  Prymnesium parvum, or golden algae, is a toxic algal species that causes the death of millions of fish every year.  Because of the ecological and economic impacts of these fish kills, a cost efficient and rapid method of detection of P. parvum is urgently needed.  Analysis of absorption spectra to determine an optical signature for P. parvum would allow for an efficient method of detecting the presence of the species. In this study we measured the absorption of three samples of P. parvum as growth progressed over time.  Spectrophotometer analysis between the wavelengths 350 and 750nm was performed.  The data was then further analyzed to give measurements of relative absorbance for each sample.  The resulting data showed variability in the optical signature over the growth cycle.

PowerPoint Presentation (19 MB)