Publication overview on the occurrence and distribution of Cyanobacteria in Portugal over the past decades

• Autor(a) principal: Dias, Miguel Rosário
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/33529
• topic: Cyanobacteria; Portugal; Distribution; Taxa checklist; Blooms; Cyanotoxins

The occurrence of cyanobacterial blooms in Portugal is increasing in frequency and intensity, leading to severe impacts on the environment but also risks to human health due to the potential production of cyanotoxins. Historical records may play an important role to go further in the understanding of the occurrence patterns and ecology of blooms. The present research relies on the recovery of historical data reported for Portugal over the past decades, published on international journals. From the scientific web databases used, Scopus yielded the highest publication records (163) with the search criteria “Cyanobacteria” + “Portugal”. The number of publications exponencially increased since the nineties, with a peak in 2011. The University of Porto (particularly CIIMAR) was the dominant affiliation institution (112) with the highest publication outputs belonging to the author Vitor Vasconcelos (57). Data published between 1986 and 2011 reported 92 cyanobacterial taxa, mainly belonging to Microcystis (28,86%), Aphanizomenon (15,22%), Pseudanabaena (9,85%), Anabaena (8,66%) and Planktothrix (8,66%). Microcystis spp. were reported across the country: South (e.g. Alqueva, Monte Novo, Alvito, Roxo and Odivelas reservoirs); Centre (e.g. Vela and Mira Lakes; Aguieira reservoir); North (e.g. Torrão, Carrapatelo and Crestuma reservoirs; urban lakes; Minho River); and Azores (e.g. Sete Cidades Lake). Reported cyanotoxins included microcystins, saxitoxins, anatoxin-a and cylindrospermopsin. The resulting taxa checklist is an important contribution to feed databases on the occurrence of Cyanobacteria in Portugal. Nevertheless, further research should focus on the correspondence of differently named strains to establish historical tracks, namely through molecular data, in order to increase light on their reincidence in target water bodies prone to develop cyanobacterial blooms.