Nutritional quality of two cyanobacteria:How rich is 'poor' food?

Cyanobacteria have often been described to be nutritionally inadequate and to interfere with zooplankton feeding. In laboratory experiments we offered 2 cyanobacteria, a unicellular Microcystis aeruginosa strain and the filamentous lVodiilaria spumigena, to the calanoid copepod Acartla tonsa as the sole diet and in food mixtures with the nutritious diatom Thalassiosira rveissflogii. Egg production was used as criterion of food quality. The use of cyanobacteria alone was an insuffic~ent d ~e t .