The Saline Lake storage of the rich mineral resources and biological resources provides an optimum contribution to the economy and the development of industry and agriculture. The eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton is usually defined as a plankton in the range from 0.2 to 3 μm diameter. The high genetic diversity of the eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton communities is observed in the HighMountain saline lakes. In recent years, the eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton attracts attentions of many researchers and many useful observations were made in the literature. The present paper summarizes the recent research progresses in systematic and biodiversity of the eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton, the composition and the distribution of the inhabiting saline lakes in the Qaidam Basin of the QinghaiTibetan Plateau. And it is pointed out that each kind of molecular biology research techniques has limitations. Some suggestions are made about the studies of the eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton inhabiting saline lakes, including how to promote the research of genetic diversity of eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton inhabiting saline lakes, how to carry out the research work based on the microbial cultivation and the pure culture isolation for eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton inhabiting saline lakes, how to tap the potential of research for the evolutionary studies based on the eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton inhabiting saline lakes, and how to promote the studies of the biological functions of the eukaryotic pico-and nano-plankton inhabiting saline lakes.

Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau  /  hypersaline lake  /  eukaryotic picoplankton  /  eukaryotic nanoplankton