Diatom communities in the Mlaștina după Luncă wetland

Student: Anikó Bakos, MSc, 2nd year

Scientific advisor: Lídia Szigyártó, PhD, Assistant Professor

The Mlaștina după Luncă wetland is a Natura 2000 site (ROSCI0113), located in the neighbourhood of Voșlobeni (Harghita County). One of the biological monitoring methods of the quality of aquatic habitats is by the analysis of the diatom communities inhabiting the protected areas such as the Mlaștina după Luncă wetland. Diatoms are unicellular, photosynthetic algae with a silica based cell wall. They live in almost all surface waters, and are very useful indicators of water quality. In the same time, in extreme aquatic habitats like moors and peat bogs, rare and special, so called extremophile species are expected to be found.

The results of our study, conducted between 2014 and 2017, confirmed that the Mlaștina după Luncă wetland is for now in relatively good qualitative state, characterized by rich and diverse diatom communities. Among the total of approximately 380 diatom species and varieties identified in the area of the site, 50 are considered rare in Romania, and 11 have never been listed before from the territory of Romania.

Hopefully, these results will increase the biodiversity importance and the necessity for protection of wetlands in the Carpathian Basin.