Barnacle settlement on rocky shores: Substratum preference and epibiosis on mussels

摘要: Understanding the dynamics of epibiosis is fundamental to understanding role biological interactions in functioning marine ecosystems. At many coastal sites, barnacles are abundant as epibionts on shells mussels. As they approach shore, cypris larvae explore environment, actively seeking suitable settlement sites and rejecting unsuitable substrata. Suitability involves micro-features surface, including its texture contours, chemical signals presence conspecifics. To investigate whether mussel indicates a preference for this substratum part barnacle Chthamalus dentatus, artificial plates were deployed at two rocky shore south coast South Africa. These offered settling cyprids four habitat choices: live mussel, shell recently dead fine resolution resin replica mimic architectural micro-surface, without characteristics natural rock mimic, surface covered film hard plastic that resembled closely possible. Settling surfaces photographed monthly, new counted allocated size classes, so survival could be estimated over period several months. Barnacles showed clear surfaces, which average supported double number settlers found replicas. turn significantly higher than numbers implying there features both deter settlement. In contrast, final abundances adults no significant effect surface. The results suggest during settlement, avoid cues from persist even after death mussel. This suggests high often mussels due saturation substratum.