Interesting Facts

When studying aquatic animals bottle sampling is a common form of organism collection, but plankton nets can also be used to collect N. scintillans (Dela-Cruz et al. 2004).

When studying population dynamics of Noctiluca scintillans, the process is quite complicated because it is hard to control for many different variables (Miyaguchi et al. 2006).  

 

Noctiluca scintillans itself is not toxic, but it can have a build up of ammonia that is released during red tides and may be responsible for the increase of fish mortality during red tides (Sahling and Uhlig 1990).

Noctiluca scintillans populations size has a strong correlation to the amount of ammonia present in the water  along with the amount of viable food sources for the organism (Dela-Cruz et al. 2004).

As previously mentioned in Interactions,  Noctiluca scintillans is not able to swim substantially, but using its positive buoyancy it is able to move up the water column to come into contact with prey (Kiorbe and Titelman 1998).

Although more information and research is needed, there seems to be a positive correlation between the presence of Thalassiosira (prey) and Noctiluca scintillans (prey). Both organisms have become more common globally over the past few decades (Dela-Cruz et al. 2004).
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Australia's amazing bioluminescent lake brought about by Noctiluca scintillans. 2013. Permission granted by Lehren Entertainment. The video can also be found on the Weird True Facts Youtube Channel.
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