[vernalpool] Algology for the Herpetologist

The following resources may be helpful for identifying freshwater algae.

http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9129/m1/1/
"Algae in water supplies: an illustrated manual on the identification,
significance, and control of algae in water supplies". is a book by
Mervin Palmer in the 1950s. It is a classic. The plates make it one of
the easiest picture guides to use. The website has a digital version of
the book. You can read it online, but I don't think you can download
it. Go directly to the color plates.

http://cfb.unh.edu/phycokey/phycokey.htm
If you roll the cursor over the images, more images will pop up. It's
not intuitively obvious how to get this site to work. Once you figure
it out, the site will be very helpful. The trick seems to be to keep
rolling the cursor over images that look most like the specimen you are
trying to identify and then click when you get a close match.

http://www.algalweb.net/
The Algal Web contains a key to freshwater algae.

In general if something looks "grass green", it is a green alga
(Chlorophyta). They can be single cells, colonies, hairlike filaments,
sheets (seaweed), or 3-dimensional (large seaweeds).

If it looks blue-green, like the color of a school chalkboard, it is
probably Cyanobacteria (previously known as "blue-green algae", until we
realized they were really bacteria and not eukaryotes). Nostoc is a
blue-green. It forms spherical balls that are really tight masses of
filaments.

In most cases you will need to view the specimen under a microscope to
make a proper identification.

--
Scott Shumway
Professor of Biology
Wheaton College
Norton, MA 02766
http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/Faculty/ScottWShumway.html
sshumway@wheatonma.edu