ABSTRACT
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) occur when microalgae rapidly proliferate in a water supply and detrimentally impact humans or the environment (Hudnell 2008, Anderson et al. 2012). HAB forming species are usually specifi c for a particular environment. For example, in marine environments, HABs predominantly consist of eukaryotic dinoflagellates, while in freshwater environments, they are composed of prokaryotic cyanobacteria (also referred to as harmful cyanobacterial blooms). Although HABs have been a natural phenomenon throughout history, the last three decades
1School of Science and Health, University of Western Sydney, Campbelltown, NSW 2560, Australia aEmail: p.dagostino@uws.edu.au bEmail: m.moffi tt@uws.edu.au 2School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW 2052, Australia. Email: b.neilan@unsw.edu.au *Corresponding author
have seen a vast increase in their prevalence and distribution (Francis 1878, Hallegraeff 1993, Codd et al. 1994, Van Dolah 2000). Putative reasons for the increase include eutrophication coinciding with a rise in population and pollution, dispersal of bloom-forming species via ship ballast water, and global warming (Lilly et al. 2002, Bolch and de Salas 2007, Heisler et al. 2008, Hallegraeff 2010, O’Neil et al. 2012, Sinha et al. 2012). Species specifi c eco-physiological adaptations allow different bloom-formers to take advantage of the environment in different geographic areas and all the factors above contribute to the overall global increase of HABs (Piccini et al. 2011, Bonilla et al. 2012, Sinha et al. 2012). Thus, bloom dynamics are very complex, with multiple species becoming dominant during different phases of the bloom (Zingone and Enevoldsen 2000, Al-Tebrineh et al. 2012a, Kremp et al. 2012).
