Intercalibration of counting methods for Ostreopsis spp. blooms in the Mediterranean Sea

•Two automated methods were proposed for the counting of Ostreopsis ovata cells.•The automated methods were tested in 9 stations along the Mediterranean cost.•The results of the automated methods were compared with standard microscopy count.•Both automated methods showed good reliability of the coun...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological indicators 2018-02, Vol.85, p.1092-1100
Main Authors: Vassalli, Massimo, Penna, Antonella, Sbrana, Francesca, Casabianca, Silvia, Gjeci, Nikolla, Capellacci, Samuela, Asnaghi, Valentina, Ottaviani, Ennio, Giussani, Valentina, Pugliese, Laura, Jauzein, Cécile, Lemée, Rodolphe, Hachani, Mohamed Amine, Turki, Souad, Açaf, Laury, Saab, Marie Abboud-Abi, Fricke, Anna, Mangialajo, Luisa, Bertolotto, Rosella, Totti, Cecilia, Accoroni, Stefano, Berdalet, Elisa, Vila, Magda, Chiantore, Mariachiara
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automatic identification
Earth Sciences
Harmful algae
Mediterranean Sea
Molecular recognition
Monitoring
Oceanography
Optical Recognition
Ostreopsis spp
Sciences of the Universe
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Summary:•Two automated methods were proposed for the counting of Ostreopsis ovata cells.•The automated methods were tested in 9 stations along the Mediterranean cost.•The results of the automated methods were compared with standard microscopy count.•Both automated methods showed good reliability of the counting. This paper describes the adoption and validation of two innovative methods for the automated count of Ostreopsis spp. concentration in sea water: a molecular assay based on RT-qPCR and an opto-electronic device implementing automatic recognition algorithms. The proposed approaches were tested on samples coming from different locations along the Mediterranean Sea and compared with the standard counting method based on microscopy observation by a taxonomy expert. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of both automatic approaches which provide a valuable tool, mostly cost and time effective, for the establishment of wide pan-Mediterranean monitoring strategies of Ostreopsis spp. blooms. Moreover, the two automatic methods demonstrated the ability to discriminate for the presence of a different but similar species, O. fattorussoi, for which new species-specific qPCR primers were developed.
ISSN:1470-160X
1872-7034
DOI:10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.07.063