The East African soda lakes are known worldwide for their huge populations of lesser flamingos. Their phytoplankton community is often dominated by the cyanobacterium Limnospira fusiformis, the main food of lesser flamingos. In the early 2010s, the population of the cyanobacterium collapsed and the picoplanktic green alga Picocystis salinarum became dominant in Lake Nakuru. Consequently, lesser flamingos had to migrate to other lakes in search of food. To establish the reasons for the success of P. salinarum, photosynthesis measurements have been performed on monoalgal cultures of both species. The examined environmental variables (temperature, light intensity) were not responsible for the dominance of P. salinarum either alone or in their any combination. Moreover, photosynthetic activity of the cyanobacterium was higher by an order of magnitude during all light and temperature treatments. Co-cultivation of L. fusiformis and P. salinarum in a chemostat revealed that a possible reason for the Limnospira replacement can be a rapid and remarkable increase of conductivity, as P. salinarum showed higher level of tolerance to this rapid change. Shortly after returning to the initial conductivity levels, the population of L. fusiformis recovered quickly.

东非苏打湖因其大量小火烈鸟而闻名于世。它们的浮游植物群落通常以梭形湖蓝藻为主，这是小火烈鸟的主要食物。2010年代初，蓝藻数量锐减，超微型浮游绿藻Picocystis salinarum成为纳库鲁湖的优势。因此，较小的火烈鸟不得不迁徙到其他湖泊寻找食物。为了确定P. salinarum成功的原因，对这两个物种的单藻培养物进行了光合作用测量。所检查的环境变量（温度、光强度）无论是单独还是其任意组合都不对P. salinarum的优势负责。此外，在所有光照和温度处理过程中，蓝藻的光合活性均提高了一个数量级。在恒化器中对梭形乳杆菌和盐假单胞菌进行共培养表明，更换Limnospira的一个可能原因可能是电导率快速显着增加，因为盐假单胞菌对这种快速变化表现出更高水平的耐受性。在恢复到初始电导率水平后不久，梭状乳杆菌的数量迅速恢复。