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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2024-03-15
    Description: Ocean acidification driven by anthropogenic climate change is causing a global decrease in pH, which is projected to be 0.4 units lower in coastal shallow waters by the year 2100. Previous studies have shown that seaweeds grown under such conditions may alter their growth and photosynthetic capacity. It is not clear how such alterations might impact interactions between seaweed and herbivores, e.g. through changes in feeding rates, nutritional value, or defense levels. Changes in seaweeds are particularly important for coastal food webs, as they are key primary producers and often habitat-forming species. We cultured the habitat-forming brown seaweed Fucus vesiculosus for 30 days in projected future pCO2 (1100 μatm) with genetically identical controls in ambient pCO2 (400 μatm). Thereafter the macroalgae were exposed to grazing by Littorina littorea, acclimated to the relevant pCO2-treatment. We found increased growth (measured as surface area increase), decreased tissue strength in a tensile strength test, and decreased chemical defense (phlorotannins) levels in seaweeds exposed to high pCO2-levels. The herbivores exposed to elevated pCO2-levels showed improved condition index, decreased consumption, but no significant change in feeding preference. Fucoid seaweeds such as F. vesiculosus play important ecological roles in coastal habitats and are often foundation species, with a key role for ecosystem structure and function. The change in surface area and associated decrease in breaking force, as demonstrated by our results, indicate that F. vesiculosus grown under elevated levels of pCO2 may acquire an altered morphology and reduced tissue strength. This, together with increased wave energy in coastal ecosystems due to climate change, could have detrimental effects by reducing both habitat and food availability for herbivores.
    Keywords: Alkalinity, total; Aragonite saturation state; Benthos; Bicarbonate ion; Bottles or small containers/Aquaria (〈20 L); Calcite saturation state; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. (2010); Carbon; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Carbon/Nitrogen ratio; Carbonate ion; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Chromista; Coast and continental shelf; Efficiency of photosystem II; Experiment duration; Fucus vesiculosus; Fugacity of carbon dioxide (water) at sea surface temperature (wet air); Growth; Growth/Morphology; Identification; Laboratory experiment; Macroalgae; Nitrogen, total; North Atlantic; OA-ICC; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre; Ochrophyta; Other studied parameter or process; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide, standard deviation; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide (water) at sea surface temperature (wet air); pH; pH, standard deviation; Phlorotannin; Primary production/Photosynthesis; Quantum yield efficiency of photosystem II; Registration number of species; Salinity; Salinity, standard deviation; Single species; Species; Temperate; Temperature, water; Temperature, water, standard deviation; Treatment; Type; Uniform resource locator/link to reference; δ13C; δ15N
    Type: Dataset
    Format: text/tab-separated-values, 4440 data points
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  • 2
    ISSN: 1573-5117
    Keywords: Ascophyllum ; Fucus ; CNBM ; light ; nitrogen ; phlorotannins
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology
    Notes: Abstract Phlorotannins, C-based defence compounds in brown seaweeds, show a high degree of spatial and temporal variation within seaweed species. One important model explaining this variation is the Carbon Nutrient Balance Model (CNBM), which states that the relative supply of carbon and limiting nutrients will determine the level of defence compounds in plants. Nitrogen is often considered to be the limiting nutrient for marine macroalgal growth and the CNBM thus predicts that when the carbon:nitrogen ratio is high, photosynthetically fixed carbon will be allocated to production of phlorotannins. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of light (i.e. carbon) and nitrogen on the phlorotannin content of two intertidal brown seaweeds, Ascophyllum nodosum and Fucus vesiculosus. This was done in an observational field study, as well as in a manipulative experiment where plants from habitats with different light regimes were subjected to different nitrogen and light treatments, and their phlorotannin content was measured after 14 days. The results showed that there was a negative relationship between tissue nitrogen and phlorotannin content in natural populations of F. vesiculosus, but not in A. nodosum. In the short term, the phlorotannin content in both algal species was not affected by changes in nitrogen availability. Exposure to sunlight had a positive effect on the phlorotannin content in natural populations of both algal species but, in the manipulative experiment, only F. vesiculosus showed a rapid response to changes in light intensities. Plants subjected to sunlight contained higher phlorotannin content than shaded plants. In conclusion, the results imply that nitrogen availability explains some of the natural variation in the phlorotannin content of F. vesiculosus, but the light environment has greater importance than nitrogen availability in predicting the phlorotannin content of each species.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2021-02-08
    Description: In the 1930s the wasting disease pathogen Labyrinthula zosterae is believed to have killed 90% of the temperate seagrass Zostera marina in the Atlantic Ocean. Despite the devastating impact of this disease the host–pathogen interaction is still poorly understood, and few field studies have investigated factors correlating with the prevalence and abundance of L. zosterae. This study measures wasting disease in natural populations of Z. marina, showing a strong correlation between the disease and both salinity and water depth. No infection was detected in Z. marina shoots from low salinity (13–25 PSU) meadows, whereas most shoots carried the disease in high salinity (25–29 PSU). Shallow (1 m) living Z. marina shoots were also more infected compared to shoots in deeper (5 m) meadows. In addition, infection and transplantation experiments showed that Z. marina shoots from low salinity meadows with low pathogen pressure were more susceptible to L. zosterae infection. The higher susceptibility could not be explained by lower content of inhibitory defense compounds in the shoots. Instead, extracts from all Z. marina shoots significantly reduced pathogen growth, suggesting that Z. marina contains inhibitory compounds that function as a constitutive defense. Overall, the results show that seagrass wasting disease is common in natural Z. marina populations in the study area and that it increases with salinity and decreases with depth. Our findings also suggest that low salinity areas can act as a refuge against seagrass wasting disease.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
    Format: text
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2023-02-08
    Description: The temperate seagrass species eelgrass Zostera marina can be infected by the wasting disease pathogen Labyrinthula zosterae, which is believed to have killed about 90% of the seagrass in the Atlantic Ocean in the 1930s. It is not known why this opportunistic pathogen sometimes becomes virulent, but the recurrent outbreaks may be due to a weakening of the Z. marina plants from adverse environmental changes. This study investigated the individual and interactive effects of multiple extrinsic factors (temperature, light, and tissue damage) on the host-pathogen interaction between Z. marina and L. zosterae in a fully crossed infection experiment. The degree of infection was measured as both lesion coverage and L. zosterae cell concentration. We also investigated if the treatment factors affect the chemical defense of the host, measured as the inhibitory capacity of seagrass extracts in bioassays with L. zosterae. Finally, gene expression of a set of targeted genes was quantified in order to investigate how the treatments change Z. marina’s response to infection. Light had a pronounced effect on L. zosterae infection measured as lesion coverage, where reduced light conditions increased lesions by 35%. The response to light on L. zosterae cell concentration was more complex and showed significant interaction with the temperature treatment. Cell concentration was also significantly affected by physical damage, where damage surprisingly resulted in a reduced cell concentration of the pathogen. No treatment factor caused detectable decrease in the inhibitory capacity of the seagrass extracts. There were several interactive effects between L. zosterae infection and the treatment factors on Z. marina growth, and on the expression of genes associated with immune defense, phenol synthesis and primary metabolism, showing that the molecular reaction toward L. zosterae infection depends on prevailing environmental conditions. Our study shows that individual or interactive effects of light, temperature and tissue damage can affect multiple aspects of host-pathogen interactions in seagrasses. These results highlight the complexity of marine host-pathogen systems, showing that more multi-factorial investigations are needed to gain a better understanding of disease in marine plants under different environmental conditions.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
    Format: text
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2024-02-07
    Description: The green seaweed Ulva is a model system to study seaweed–bacteria interactions, but the impact of environmental drivers on the dynamics of these interactions is little understood. In this study, we investigated the stability and variability of the seaweed-associated bacteria across the Atlantic–Baltic Sea salinity gradient. We characterized the bacterial communities of 15 Ulva sensu lato species along 2,000 km of coastline in a total of 481 samples. Our results demonstrate that the Ulva-associated bacterial composition was strongly structured by both salinity and host species (together explaining between 34% and 91% of the variation in the abundance of the different bacterial genera). The largest shift in the bacterial consortia coincided with the horohalinicum (5–8 PSU, known as the transition zone from freshwater to marine conditions). Low-salinity communities especially contained high relative abundances of Luteolibacter, Cyanobium, Pirellula, Lacihabitans and an uncultured Spirosomaceae, whereas high-salinity communities were predominantly enriched in Litorimonas, Leucothrix, Sulfurovum, Algibacter and Dokdonia. We identified a small taxonomic core community (consisting of Paracoccus, Sulfitobacter and an uncultured Rhodobacteraceae), which together contributed to 14% of the reads per sample, on average. Additional core taxa followed a gradient model, as more core taxa were shared between neighbouring salinity ranges than between ranges at opposite ends of the Atlantic–Baltic Sea gradient. Our results contradict earlier statements that Ulva-associated bacterial communities are taxonomically highly variable across individuals and largely stochastically defined. Characteristic bacterial communities associated with distinct salinity regions may therefore facilitate the host's adaptation across the environmental gradient.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
    Format: text
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