Succession of algae population and blooms with their driving factors in China’s lakes

Abstract

Algae play an important role in lake ecosystems, and algal succession is vital to studying the mechanism of algal bloom outbreaks. This paper provides a comprehensive review of algae blooms development, bloom-forming algae succession, the diversity of common blooms-forming algae, and key drivers for algae succession in Chinese lakes, based on an extensive literature survey and data sets. Furthermore, it summarizes the influencing factors for algae blooms and bloom-forming algae succession in five lake zones of China. The results indicated that the number of research publications on algal blooms in China constituted the largest share of global research, representing 41.9 %. The predominant types of algae blooms in all publications were cyanobacterial blooms, followed by dinoflagellate blooms. The blooms-forming algae in China's lakes have experienced a clear succession pattern: Bacillariophyta, Chlorophyta and Pyrrophyta were dominated in the initial investigations; dominance of Microcystis, Anabaena, dinoflagellates and diatoms increased significantly since1960s; in the past decade, Cylindrospermopsis and dinoflagellates expanded. Current research on algae blooms in Chinese lakes mainly focuses on cyanobacterial blooms, especially Microcystis blooms, while researches on filamentous cyanobacterial blooms and other algae blooms is still insufficient. This systematic review will help researchers to understand the basic features such as the occurrence, the diversity, the physio-ecology and the driving factors of common blooms-forming algae, will further provide a scientific basis for their control in various lake regions.