The Diatoms: From Eutrophic Indicators to Mitigators
Diatoms are heterokonts which are highly diverse and have significant evolutionary differences when compared with green algae and vascular plants. Diatoms drive primary production in all photic zones from the equator to arctic. Diatoms have great potentia
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roduction Human activities can bring negative effects in the environment. Any substance that can cause a negative effect in the environment is considered a pollutant which has to be controlled in order to reduce adverse impacts. Pollutants can come from different sources, although human activities like agriculture, change of land use, and others are one source of production of pollutants which can affect the environment (Gottschalk et al. 2011). Elevated nutrients contribute to poor lake ecosystem, which highlights the need for efficient nutrient removal strategies that enable us to protect or restore the water bodies from eutrophication. Biological elements, such as macroinvertebrate species, macrophytes, diatoms, and zooplankton, have been used to monitor nutrient changes (Lougheed et al. 2007). Diatoms are one of the most explored species for water quality assessment around the world, due to their sensitive time-dependent response (Stevenson 2014). The main purpose of developing biological monitoring strategies is to enable researchers to assess water quality of lotic and lentic systems. This approach makes use of aquatic biota to evaluate complex and dynamic changes in water quality. Biotic communities are generally sensitive to inflow of chemicals and change in physical factors that bring about a change in their morphology and diversity which reflects the physiochemical conditions of the ecosystems. This approach uses biota to represent the general environmental conditions and assess environmental quality of the monitored ecosystem. The biotic organisms of water include macroinvertebrates, phytoplankton, zooplankton, phyto-benthic macroinvertebrates, and the fish communities (De Pauw A. Datta (*) · T. K. Marella · S. P. Wani International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru, India A. Tiwari AMITY University, Noida, India © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 S. K. Gupta, F. Bux (eds.), Application of Microalgae in Wastewater Treatment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13913-1_2
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et al. 2000). The ecological indicators are used based on species diversity of these organisms to monitor water quality, hydrology, and the overall health of a water body. Indicators species are used to monitor the levels of toxins, physicochemical parameters, and the overall nature of the water resource (Nixon 2009). The role played by algae is crucial in all water ecosystems. They are identified as strands or filaments in rivers and along the lake shorelines and act as a link between the biotic and abiotic environments. The algal community assemblage and abundance change in response to water quality fluctuations, and this can be attributed to their direct reliance on making them sensitive to water quality changes. The sensitivity of algae to water quality changes makes them useful as bioindicators of the physical and chemical properties in water environments. Diatoms are single-celled organisms and basically the lone member group of algal organisms applied in aquatic studies until
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