Flexible fouling control in marine organisms: Are antifouling defenses synchronized with or fine-tuned to colonization pressure?

• Applicant: Professor Martin Wahl, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 206622157

Epibiosis – the growth of organisms on other organisms – is paramount in marine systems. The colonization of a host’s outer surface affects all its interactions with the biotic and abiotic environment and has been shown to shape entire marine communities. Many marine macro-organisms have evolved antifouling defense systems to control epibiosis at their body surface. In contrast to similar biotic interactions such as predator-prey or host-parasite to date nothing is known about whether or how antifouling defense is regulated. It seems of selective advantage that the production and deployment of defenses be driven by demand (fouling pressure) or by resource availability (energy, food) as found for other defenses. Such an ecological tuning of antifouling defenses is unexplored so far and will constitute the topic of the present project.We will describe the seasonal fluctuations of fouling pressure in general and the occurrence and fouling rates of single fouler taxa. We will further investigate how the “chemical landscape” at a basibiont’s surface in general and the components of the antifouling defense systems in particular vary seasonally in selected host species. We will then analyse whether synchronization between fouling pressure and defense deployment exists. Finally we will investigate whether defenses are induced by fouling pressure and/or controlled by the availability of resources. The findings will help to fill an essential gap in our understanding of a central feature in marine ecology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants