Plankton communities in acidic mining lakes (pH 2.5–3.3) are species-poor because they
face extreme environmental conditions, eg 150mgl− 1 Fe2++ Fe3+. We investigated the
growth characteristics of the dominant pigmented species, the flagellate Chlamydomonas
acidophila, in semi-continuous culture experiments under in situ conditions. The following
hypotheses were tested:(1) Low inorganic carbon (IC) concentrations in the epilimnion (eg
0.3 mgl− 1) arising from the low pH limit phototrophic growth (H-1);(2) the additional use of …