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Biofilm cue for larval settlement in Hydroides elegans (Polychaeta): is contact necessary?

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Abstract

Larvae of many sessile marine invertebrates settle in response to surface microbial communities (biofilms), but the effects of soluble compounds from biofilms in affecting larval behavior prior to settlement, attachment, and metamorphosis have been little studied. This question was addressed by videotaping the behavior of competent larvae of the serpulid, Hydroides elegans, above settlement-inducing biofilms. Adult worms were collected in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USA in November 2012 and spawned almost immediately. Six-day old larvae were placed in five replicated treatments in small cups: (1) with a natural biofilm; (2) with a natural biofilm on an 8-µm screen, 1 mm above the bottom of a clean cup; (3) with a natural biofilm beneath a clean screen; (4) in a clean cup; and (5) in a clean cup with a clean screen. Using the videotapes, larval swimming speeds and trajectories were quantified within 5 min of the larvae being placed in a treatment. Only larvae that touched a biofilm, i.e., in treatments (1) and (2), slowed their swimming speed and increased the amount of time spent crawling rather than swimming. This shows that under these conditions, any soluble cues emanating from a biofilm do not affect settlement behavior. Furthermore, after 24 h close to 100 % of larva in the two accessible biofilm treatments had metamorphosed and <15 % in treatments that included a biofilm under a clean screen and no biofilm at all, strongly suggesting that soluble cues for settlement were not produced by the biofilms over the longer time period.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by funds from NSF Grant IOS-0842681 and ONR Grants N00014-05-1-0579 and N00014-08-1-0413 to M. G. H., and from NSF Grant IOS-0842685 to M. A. R. K. We thank T. Cooper for technical assistance. M. G. H. and M. A. R. K. are extremely grateful to the Helen R. Whiteley Center at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington for providing an environment more conducive to evaluating data and writing research papers than any others we know.

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  1. Kewalo Marine Laboratory, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 41 Ahui St., Honolulu, HI, 96813, USA

    Michael G. Hadfield, Brian T. Nedved & Sean Wilbur

  2. Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-3140, USA

    M. A. R. Koehl

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  1. Michael G. Hadfield
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  4. M. A. R. Koehl
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Correspondence to Michael G. Hadfield.

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Communicated by J. Grassle.

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Hadfield, M.G., Nedved, B.T., Wilbur, S. et al. Biofilm cue for larval settlement in Hydroides elegans (Polychaeta): is contact necessary?. Mar Biol 161, 2577–2587 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-014-2529-0

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