Diversity of fungi at various depths of marine water

Fungi are native inhabitants of water and some species behave as opportunisticpathogens in man. Fungi, all above all filamentous fungi can occur almost everywhere, evenin marine water. The knowledge about the occurrence and diversity of fungi in water hasincreased considerably from a low knowledge base. The aim of this study was to gain anoverview of the spectrum of filamentous fungi in marine water. Stratified samples of marinewater were collected from Arabian Sea near Dona Paula beach, Goa under as sterile conditionsas possible from six different depths which varied from 5 to 200 centimeters in depth.Attempts were made to recover fungi from these different water samples collected. Fungiwere isolated by using membrane filtration and plating method with subsequent cultivationon agar plates. The different taxa of fungi were identified using routine techniques as well asmolecular methods. Fungi were analyzed in all the water samples examined. This paper aimsat the isolation and identification of fungi from marine water. The isolation of fungi fromdifferent depths of water suggests that there are a wide variety of fungi in marine water andthe most prevailing genera were found to be Aspergillus sp., Cladosporium cladosporioides andThysanophora sp. This study showed that marine water can also be a reservoir for widediversity of fungi.