New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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Uptake of palytoxin-like compounds by shellfish fed Ostreopsis siamensis (Dinophyceae)

Lesley Rhodes¹
Neale Towers²
Lyn Briggs²
Rex Munday²
Janet Adamson¹

¹Cawthron Institute
Private Bag 2
Nelson, New Zealand
email: lesley@cawthron.org.nz
²AgResearch
Ruakura Agricultural Research Centre
Private Bag 3123
Hamilton, New Zealand

Abstract   GreenshellTM mussels (Perna canaliculus Gmelin), scallops (Pecten novaezealandiae Reeve), and Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas Thunberg) were fed with a New Zealand strain of mass cultured Ostreopsis siamensis Schmidt (for 27 and 84 h and with 1.5 x 10⁶ or 8.6 x 10⁶ cells, respectively) under laboratory conditions. The microalgal cells contained 0.3 pg palytoxin equivalents cell-1 (as determined by the haemolysis neutralisation assay (HNA) of Bignami (1993)) and extracts of these cells were toxic to mice after intraperitoneal injection. No palytoxin-like material was detected either in the hepatopancreas or the muscle and roe of mussels fed O. siamensis. Oysters contained detectable amounts of toxin in hepatopancreas muscle, and roe while higher concentrations were present in the hepatopancreas of scallops. Extracts of control shellfish (tested biotoxin free and not fed O. siamensis) were toxic to mice, and there was no definitive evidence that feeding shellfish with O. siamensis at the levels employed in the present experiment increased the toxicity of shellfish tissue extracts to mice.

Keywords   Ostreopsis siamensis; dinoflagellate; palytoxin; ostreocin; shellfish feeding trials

M02019 Received 20 March 2002; accepted 5 June 2002; published 17 September 2002
New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 2002, Vol. 36: 631-636
0028-8330/02/3603-0631 $7.00 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2002

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