Succession of marine fouling community influences the associated mobile fauna via physical complexity increment

Abstract

Sessile communities provide habitat for feeding, reproduction and protection to a diverse mobile fauna. Along succession, the growth and overgrowth of three-dimensional sessile organisms generate structural complexity and microhabitats for mobile organisms. Most studies focus on one species or group of the sessile fauna as a habitat provider, but here we investigated the whole community, using fouling communities as a model. We tested the hypothesis that they would gain structural complexity along succession, resulting in an increase in abundance and biomass, and compositional changes of the associated mobile groups. The organisms were obtained from communities growing on PVC plates left in the water for 6, 9 and 12 months. Early succession fouling communities (6 months) were mostly flatter, dominated by encrusting bryozoans and more empty space and cover of delicate hydrozoans and filamentous algae. Advanced-succession fouling communities (9 and 12 months) showed a biomass increment and compositional changes by the increased cover of structurally complex sessile organisms, such as arborescent bryozoans and sponges. Mobile groups showed higher abundance and biomass, and a different composition at later stages. Thus, our results emphasise how the structural complexity provided by fouling organisms and the changes over succession may mediate the changes in the associated mobile fauna.

Monitoring Non-indigenous Species in Port Habitats: First Application of a Standardized North American Protocol in the Mediterranean Sea

“…On the other hand, the effort for sampling and analyzing the panels is considerable. Finally, this protocol is predominantly focusing on the assessment of the sessile hard-bottom fauna, not providing complete quantitative data on the mobile component living on the panels (e.g., see Vicente et al, 2021), as well as on organisms dwelling in soft bottoms (e.g., see Chatzinikolaou et al, 2018), that should ideally be also considered for future monitoring programs on NIS in port habitats.…”

Effect of habitat topography on the structure and diversity of benthic communities across five marinas from the southwestern Atlantic Ocean

“…Therefore, the effect of increased topography for mobile organisms was not straightforward as initially expected. This inconsistent effect could be either a direct result of the complexity itself or an indirect effect of the modifications it caused in the sessile community, as already demonstrated in a region nearby (Vicente et al, 2021). Responses of benthic organisms to complexity are more evident when complexity intervention closely matches body size (Hacker & Steneck, 1990;Köhler et al, 1999;Mcabendroth et al, 2005;.…”

Variation in the attached community structure and function of artificial habitats during ecological succession: A case study of the artificial reef area in Bailong Pearl Bay, China

“…Compared with land, the ocean has remained chemically and biologically stable for a long time, but with the continuous development of ports, ship transportation, resource extraction and artificial habitat deployment, an increasing number of artificial structures have created new usable space for marine organisms, and the biological community inhabiting their surface appears to have experienced ecological succession (Vicente et al, 2021). The sessile, attached or free-living organisms that inhabit the surface of objects in the marine environment are called marine attached organisms (Lin et al, 2020).…”

“…The attached community not only provides a food source for organisms at high trophic levels (Lin et al, 2018) but also increases microspatial complexity (Jaubet et al, 2013;Lavender et al, 2017), providing shelter and breeding sites for a variety of swimming organisms (Machado et al, 2019) and allowing them to colonize and grow (Antoniadou et al, 2010;Birdsey et al, 2012). Studies on the succession trend of attached communities in specific sea areas usually use hanging boards of different materials as biological attachment bases, such as PVC boards (Lezzi et al, 2018;Vicente et al, 2021), ceramic boards (Uribe et al, 2015), acrylic boards (Abed et al, 2019), and silicate concrete boards (Zhan et al, 2021). For artificial structures actually deployed in seawater, visual and photographic methods are usually used to identify, record and analyse the attached organisms (Fariñas-Franco and Roberts, 2014;Higgins et al, 2019;Toledo et al, 2020).…”

“…are commonly used as indicators to measure differences in the attached community between different successional stages. Vicente et al (2021) found that structures formed by sessile organisms tended to become more complex with succession, leading to increases in abundance and biomass and changes in the composition of associated free-living communities. Abed et al (2019) investigated the attached community on acrylic boards in the coastal waters of the Sultanate of Oman in the early stage of succession and found that the total biomass, coverage rate and bacterial counts of large attached organisms increased significantly over time.…”