https://touchingfish.top/en/tags/phosphorus-limitation/Recent content in Phosphorus-Limitation on TouchingFish.topHugoenSun, 05 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://touchingfish.top/en/2020/phosphorus-and-dinoflagellate/Sun, 05 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://touchingfish.top/en/2020/phosphorus-and-dinoflagellate/<h2 id="first-encounter">First Encounter</h2> <p><em>Amphidinium carterae</em>. I must have said that name a thousand times — awkward and clumsy at first, until it rolled off the tongue like the name of an old friend.</p> <p>It is a harmful algal bloom dinoflagellate, classified under the phylum Dinoflagellata, class Dinophyceae, order Gymnodiniales, family Gymnodiniaceae, genus <em>Amphidinium</em>. It is found in tropical and temperate waters worldwide. In China, it appears mainly in the South China Sea and around Sanya, Hainan<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup>. I have no idea whether anyone has ever tried to tally up the economic losses this tiny alga causes each year, or how many coastal residents it keeps awake at night. All I know is that the first time I saw it under a microscope, its flagella traced elegant arcs across the slide, and for a moment I completely forgot its reputation as a red-tide organism.</p>