Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Toro-Farmer, Gerardo

Area of Concentration

Marine Biology

Abstract

Karenia brevis is a toxic dinoflagellate that naturally occurs in Florida’s west coast waters. When the populations of K. brevis bloom it is commonly called red tides, which is a type of Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) that causes many problems for Florida’s marine and human populations. This research focuses on an area of Florida from Pinellas to Lee county examining existing public databases of K. brevis density and water nutrient levels from 2000-2018. Spatial and temporal analyzes helped to examine the existing data and determine if any possible patterns or smaller areas of interest are present. Temporal methods revealed anomalous years of K. brevis concentration in 2001, 2005, and 2018 averaging as high as 3.75 million cells per Liter. Spatial examination revealed several clusters in the study area that had distribution ranges as high as 4 to 10 million cells per Liter. The highest density of K. brevis was a small patch in the range of 42+ million around Sanibel Island in Lee County. The nitrogen and phosphorus distributions showed a possible inverse correlation between their concentration levels such as, whenever there would be a high level of nitrogen in the water, the phosphorus level for that same geographic area would be in the lower levels. Overall, this study showed some possible relationships between the spatial distribution and densities of K. brevis densities and the concentration of some limiting nutrients. The analysis of the existing datasets also revealed that there is a need for more comprehensive and regional-wide standard sampling methods to fill important ancillary data gaps, including environmental variables such as water temperature and salinity.

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