Chapter 32 



Yeasts in Marine Environments* t ** 



J. W. Fell and N. van Uden 



V/onsiderable research has been devoted to the bacterial flora 

 of the oceans (21). However, the knowledge of marine occurring 

 yeasts has been limited and only within recent years have there 

 been extensive studies on this subject. In a series of papers first 

 appearing in 1952, Russian microbiologists reported the quanti- 

 tative distribution of yeasts in the Black and Okhotsk Seas, the 

 Pacific Ocean and the Arctic (8, 10, 12, 15, 16). Yeasts were 

 found in littoral zones and in open ocean waters as far as 60 miles 

 from shore. Populations were most dense in the inshore locales 

 and decreased progressively with distance from shore. Similarly, 

 the number of yeasts per unit volume decreased with depth 

 although viable cells were reported from 4,000 meters. This 

 quantitative decrease with depth was not always consistent, as 

 increases were observed at variable depths that were often in 

 the range of thousands of cells per liter. It may be concluded 

 from the Russian studies that yeasts have a wide distribution 

 in marine waters and probably represent more than transitory 

 or incidental forms. 



To be reported here, is a summation of observations on the 

 distribution, ecology, and taxonomy of yeasts isolated from the 

 subtropical Atlantic near Miami, Florida and the wann temperate 

 Pacific adjacent to La Jolla, Califoraia. Primary emphasis was 



* Contribution No. 370 from the Institute of Marine Sciences, University of 

 Miami, Miami, Fla. 



t This research was supported in part by grants from the National Science 

 Foundation and the National Institute of Health. 



** Part of the work was executed at the Microbiology Laboratories (Dr. Claude 

 E. ZoBell), Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Univ. of California, La Jolla, 

 Calif., with a grant of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. 



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