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Characteristics of settling coral reef fish are related to recruitment timing and success.

ABSTRACT: Many marine populations exhibit high variability in the recruitment of young into the population. While environmental cycles and oceanography explain some patterns of replenishment, the role of other growth-related processes in influencing settlement and recruitment is less clear. Examination of a 65-mo. time series of recruitment of a common coral reef fish, Stegastes partitus, to the reefs of the upper Florida Keys revealed that during peak recruitment months, settlement stage larvae arriving during dark lunar phases grew faster as larvae and were larger at settlement compared to those settling during the light lunar phases. However, the strength and direction of early trait-mediated selective mortality also varied by settlement lunar phase such that the early life history traits of 2-4 week old recruit survivors that settled across the lunar cycle converged to more similar values. Similarly, within peak settlement periods, early life history traits of settling larvae and selective mortality of recruits varied by the magnitude of the settlement event: larvae settling in larger events had longer PLDs and consequently were larger at settlement than those settling in smaller pulses. Traits also varied by recruitment habitat: recruits surviving in live coral habitat (vs rubble) or areas with higher densities of adult conspecifics were those that were larger at settlement. Reef habitats, especially those with high densities of territorial conspecifics, are more challenging habitats for young fish to occupy and small settlers (due to lower larval growth and/or shorter PLDs) to these habitats have a lower chance of survival than they do in rubble habitats. Settling reef fish are not all equal and the time and location of settlement influences the likelihood that individuals will survive to contribute to the population.

SUBMITTER: Rankin TL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4177557 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Characteristics of settling coral reef fish are related to recruitment timing and success.

Rankin Tauna L TL Sponaugle Su S

PloS one 20140924 9

Many marine populations exhibit high variability in the recruitment of young into the population. While environmental cycles and oceanography explain some patterns of replenishment, the role of other growth-related processes in influencing settlement and recruitment is less clear. Examination of a 65-mo. time series of recruitment of a common coral reef fish, Stegastes partitus, to the reefs of the upper Florida Keys revealed that during peak recruitment months, settlement stage larvae arriving ...[more]

PMID: 25250964

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Project description:Coral reefs around the world are rapidly degrading due to a range of environmental stressors. Habitat degradation modifies the sensory landscape within which predator-prey interactions occur, with implications for olfactory-mediated behaviours. Predator naïve settlement-stage damselfish rely on conspecific damage-released odours (i.e., alarm odours) to inform risk assessments. Yet, species such as the Ambon damselfish, Pomacentrus amboinensis, become unable to respond appropriately to these cues when living in dead-degraded coral habitats, leading to increased mortality through loss of vigilance. Reef fish predators also rely on odours from damaged prey to locate, assess prey quality and engage in prey-stealing, but it is unknown whether their responses are also modified by the change to dead-degraded coral habitats. Implications for prey clearly depend on how their predatory counterparts are affected, therefore the present study tested whether olfactory-mediated foraging responses in the dusky dottyback, Pseudochromis fuscus, a common predator of P. amboinensis, were similarly affected by coral degradation. A y-maze was used to measure the ability of Ps. fuscus to detect and move towards odours, against different background water sources. Ps. fuscus were exposed to damage-released odours from juvenile P. amboinensis, or a control cue of seawater, against a background of seawater treated with either healthy or dead-degraded hard coral. Predators exhibited an increased time allocation to the chambers of y-mazes injected with damage-released odours, with comparable levels of response in both healthy and dead-degraded coral treated waters. In control treatments, where damage-released odours were replaced with a control seawater cue, fish showed no increased preference for either chamber of the y-maze. Our results suggest that olfactory-mediated foraging behaviours may persist in Ps. fuscus within dead-degraded coral habitats. Ps. fuscus may consequently gain a sensory advantage over P. amboinensis, potentially altering the outcome of predator-prey interactions.

Project description:Transcriptional profiling of gene responses in liver in the coral reef fish Pomacentrus moluccensis in response to different types of environmental stress: cold, heat, hypoxic and hyposmotic shock. Goal was to determine the common effects of different types of environmental stress on gene expression as well as responses unique to different stressors. Abstract from Kassahn et al. BMC Genomics (2007) 8:358 Background While our understanding of the importance of transcriptional regulation for biological function is continuously growing, we still know comparatively little about how environmentally-induced stress affects gene expression in vertebrates and how consistent transcriptional stress responses are across different types of environmental stress. Results In this study, we looked for a genetic measure of environmental stress and used a multi-stressor approach to identify components of a common stress response as well as components unique to different types of environmental stress. We exposed individuals of the coral reef fish Pomacentrus moluccensis to hypoxic, hyposmotic, cold and heat shock and measured the responses of approximately 16,000 genes in liver. We also compared winter and summer responses to heat shock to examine the capacity for such responses to vary with acclimation to different ambient temperatures. We identified a series of gene functions that were consistently involved in all stress responses examined here, suggesting common effects of stress on biological function. These common responses were achieved by the regulation of largely independent sets of genes and the responses of individual genes varied greatly across different stress types. However, we were able to identify groups of co-regulated genes, the genes within which shared similar functions. Given current estimates of climatic change, we were particularly interested in the response to prolonged heat exposure. In total, 324 gene loci were differentially expressed following exposure to heat over five days. The functions of these heat-responsive genes suggest that prolonged heat stress leads to oxidative stress and protein damage, challenge of the immune system, and a re-allocation of energy sources. Conclusion This is the first environmental genomic study to measure gene regulation in response to different environmental stressors in a natural population of a warm-adapted ectothermic vertebrate. This study offers insight into the effects of environmental stress on biological function and sheds light on the expected sensitivity of coral reef fishes to elevated temperatures in the future. Keywords: Stress response

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Characteristics of settling coral reef fish are related to recruitment timing and success.

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Characteristics of settling coral reef fish are related to recruitment timing and success.

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