Phytoplankton: quality indexes, functional groups and toxicity

The primary scientific centre of my doctorate is phytoplankton, especially some specific aspects of its ecology. Phytoplankton, the plant component, constitutes together with phytobenthos and periphyton the photosynthetic entity of inland waters (Tonolli, 1964). In man-made lakes, because of the great variations in the water level, which can reach 10-15 meters in Sardinia (Sechi, 1986), the presence and importance of phytobenthos and periphyton is almost negligible, so that all the primary productive processes are due to phytoplankton (Sechi, 1986). In particular, my interests were: to verify the possibility of using the approach of functional groups as proposed by Reynolds et al. (2002) to classify phytoplankton of Sardinian reservoirs (thematic A; Chapter 1); to evaluate the water quality of lotic and lentic Sardinian environments using phytoplankton and/or microalgae as bioindicators, as suggested by the WFD 2000/60/CE (thematic B; Chapters 2, 3 and 4); to verify the relationships between trophic states of Sardinian reservoirs and toxic Cyanobacteria blooms (thematic C; Chapters 5 and 6), which could invalidate the use of the waters (Bartram et al., 1999; Funari et al., 2000; Sotero-Santos et al., 2006).