Distribution of Fabrea salina at Salt Pond

Fabrea salina living at salt pond is an interesting ciliate in the research of photobiology and live food for aquaculture. This study was carried out to understand the natural habitat of F. salina at salt pond, which would be a basic biological knowledge for the indoor mass culture of this ciliate. In this research, the water quality as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll-a was examined with the population density of the ciliate at salt pond. The highest population density of F. salina occurred at 109 ppt and $31^{\circ}C$with 2,390 inds./L in August, and the distribution of the ciliate was positively correlated with salinity, temperature, and chlorophyll­a. Even though F. salina is a very euryharine ciliate, it did not occur at the salinity below 47 ppt in this study. Its reason is able to be explained with the occurrence of many predators as small fish and food competitors as zooplankton living at low salinity of salt pont. While F. salina occurred with Anemia at the same habitat using the same food source, the optimum salinity for the ciliate was a little higher than that of Anemia, and the optimum temperature for the former was a little lower than that of the later. This should be a reason for that these two species have different ecological nich at the same habitat using the same food source.