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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, April 2002, p. 1872-1881, Vol. 68, No. 4
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.4.1872-1881.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Effect of Growth Conditions and Staining Procedure upon the Subsurface Transport and Attachment Behaviors of a Groundwater Protist
Ronald W. Harvey,1* Naleen Mayberry,2,
Nancy E. Kinner,2 David W. Metge,1 and Franco Novarino3
U.S. Geological Survey, Boulder, Colorado 80303-1066,1 Environmental Research Group, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824,2 Department of Zoology, The Natural History Museum, London, SW&5BD, United Kingdom3
Received 4 September 2001/ Accepted 24 January 2002
The transport and attachment behaviors of Spumella guttula (Kent), a nanoflagellate (protist) found in contaminated and uncontaminated aquifer sediments in Cape Cod, Mass., were assessed in flowthrough and static columns and in a field injection-and-recovery transport experiment involving an array of multilevel samplers. Transport of S. guttula harvested from low-nutrient (10 mg of dissolved organic carbon per liter), slightly acidic, granular (porous) growth media was compared to earlier observations involving nanoflagellates grown in a traditional high-nutrient liquid broth. In contrast to the highly retarded (retardation factor of 
3) subsurface transport previously reported for S. guttula, the peak concentration of porous-medium-grown S. guttula traveled concomitantly with that of a conservative (bromide) tracer. About one-third of the porous-medium-grown nanoflagellates added to the aquifer were transported at least 2.8 m downgradient, compared to only 2% of the broth-grown nanoflagellates. Flowthrough column studies revealed that a vital (hydroethidine [HE]) staining procedure resulted in considerably less attachment (more transport) of S. guttula in aquifer sediments than did a staining-and-fixation procedure involving 4',6'-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) and glutaraldehyde. The calculated collision efficiency (10-2 for porous-medium-grown, DAPI-stained nanoflagellates) was comparable to that observed earlier for the indigenous community of unattached groundwater bacteria that serve as prey. The attachment of HE-labeled S. guttula onto aquifer sediment grains was independent of pH (over the range from pH 3 to 9) suggesting a primary attachment mechanism that may be fundamentally different from that of their prey bacteria, which exhibit sharp decreases in fractional attachment with increasing pH. The high degree of mobility of S. guttula in the aquifer sediments has important ecological implications for the protistan community within the temporally changing plume of organic contaminants in the Cape Cod aquifer.
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: U.S. Geological Survey, 3215 Marine St., Boulder, CO 80303-1066. Phone: (303) 541-3034. Fax: (303) 447-2505. E-mail: rwharvey{at}usgs.gov.
Present address: Wright Pierce, Topsham, ME 04086.
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, April 2002, p. 1872-1881, Vol. 68, No. 4
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.4.1872-1881.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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