About

This atlas of the microalgae of Lake Kinneret is based on data, knowledge and experience gained from monitoring the phytoplankton of the lake over several decades, as part of the government-funded Kinneret Monitoring Program initiated in 1969 and ongoing. Lake Kinneret has been and continues to be a strategic source of drinking water for the State of Israel. Monitoring its phytoplankton jointly with physical, chemical and other biological components is crucial for being able to follow extreme events, and short- and long-term trends in ecological processes taking place in the lake, understand lake functioning, and provide decision makers with knowledgeable recommendations for lake management that will ensure high water quality. For detailed information about this monitoring program see Sukenik et al. 2014.

The phytoplankton data collected for the monitoring program are stored in a database and have been used for a variety of investigations leading to scientific publications. But mostly, the data used were biomass of taxonomic groups (cyanobacteria, diatoms, dinoflagellates etc.) rather than information on individual species. Over the years, only ~ 20-30 of the nearly 200 species of phytoplankton occurring in Lake Kinneret received focused scientific attention. These were mostly species that impact the ecosystem and especially water quality: species that form blooms or possess unique physiological capabilities (e.g. N-fixation, toxin production). But the monitoring data for most of the species remains buried in annual reports and was never published.

This atlas attempts to address this gap and present the data. It is prepared as a service to the community of those interested in the algae of Lake Kinneret: researchers, students, teachers, nature lovers. For each species it includes hints on how to identify it and tell it apart from similarly looking species in Kinneret water; the best microscope photos we took; its long-term abundance time-series; what time of the year is best to find it; what environmental parameters are correlated with its increased abundance; any additional interesting information we have for it.

Several parameters are recorded for every species of phytoplankton counted in each sample: its abundance as cells mL⁻¹; its linear dimensions from which the volume per cell is computed, and its biomass – as the product of cells mL⁻¹ x volume cell-1 assuming a specific gravity of 1. For colonial (including filamentous) species we also present data on colony size (cells per colony) and abundance (colonies mL⁻¹).