The Importance of Home Cleaning: Sediment Transport by Alpheid Shrimps Provides a Competitive Advantage to Their Host Anemones

Pérez-Botello, Antar Mijail; Mascaró, Maité; Simões, Nuno

doi:10.3389/fmars.2021.677024

Cited by 2 publications

References 63 publications

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Stable isotopes disentangle niche partitioning and species co-occurrence in a multi-level marine mutualism

Titus,

Froehlich,

Vondriska

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Ecologists have long sought general explanations for the co-occurrence of ecologically similar taxa. Niche theory explains co-occurrence via functional differences among taxa that reduce competition and promote resource partitioning. Alternatively, the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography suggests that co-occurrence can be attributed to stochastic processes, and thus, presupposes that ecologically similar species that occur in sympatry are functionally analogous. We test these alternative hypotheses in multiple dimensions using the most diverse crustacean-sea anemone symbiosis from coral reefs in the Tropical Western Atlantic. δ13C and δ15N stable isotope analyses of six crustacean symbionts that co-occur around the host anemoneBartholomea annulataexhibit highly differentiated isotopic niche space spanning three trophic levels. As multiple crustacean species within the symbiosis have been documented as cleaners that remove parasites from reef fishes, we extended our investigation into the broader cleaner community. Our stable isotope analyses of cleaners shows that only Pederson’s cleaner shrimpAncylomenes pedersoniexhibits δ15N isotopic signatures that are consistent with a dedicated cleaning lifestyle. Co-occurring species that have been previously described to clean reef fishes such asPericlimenes yucatanicus, Stenopus hispidus,andStenorhynchus seticornisall occupy trophic levels well belowAn. pedersoni. Taken together, our data are consistent with the expectations of niche theory: co-occurring symbiotic crustaceans have highly partitioned niche space with low levels of functional redundancy. Finally, our findings reinforce and extend the ecological importance ofAn. pedersonias likely the only dedicated cleaner shrimp on coral reefs in the Tropical Western Atlantic.

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Stable isotopes disentangle niche partitioning and species co-occurrence in a multi-level marine mutualism

Titus,

Froehlich,

Vondriska

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Geographic range size and species morphology determines the organization of sponge host-guest interaction networks across tropical coral reefs

Pérez-Botello,

Dáttilo,

Simões

2023

PeerJ

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Sponges are widely spread organisms in the tropical reefs of the American Northwest-Atlantic Ocean, they structure ecosystems and provide services such as shelter, protection from predators, and food sources to a wide diversity of both vertebrates and invertebrates species. The high diversity of sponge-associated fauna can generate complex networks of species interactions over small and large spatial-temporal gradients. One way to start uncovering the organization of the sponge host-guest complex networks is to understand how the accumulated geographic area, the sponge morphology and, sponge taxonomy contributes to the connectivity of sponge species within such networks. This study is a meta-analysis based on previous sponge host-guest literature obtained in 65 scientific publications, yielding a total of 745 host-guest interactions between sponges and their associated fauna across the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. We analyzed the sponge species contribution to network organization in the Northwest Tropical Atlantic coral reefs by using the combination of seven complementary species-level descriptors and related this importance with three main traits, sponge-accumulated geographic area, functional sponge morphology, and sponges’ taxonomy bias. In general, we observed that sponges with a widespread distribution and a higher accumulated geographic area had a greater network structural contribution. Similarly, we also found that Cup-like and Massive functional morphologies trend to be shapes with a greater contribution to the interaction network organization compared to the Erect and Crust-like morphos. Lastly, we did not detect a taxonomy bias between interaction network organization and sponges’ orders. These results highlight the importance of a specific combination of sponge traits to promote the diversity of association between reef sponges and their guest species.

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The Importance of Home Cleaning: Sediment Transport by Alpheid Shrimps Provides a Competitive Advantage to Their Host Anemones

Cited by 2 publications

References 63 publications

Stable isotopes disentangle niche partitioning and species co-occurrence in a multi-level marine mutualism

Stable isotopes disentangle niche partitioning and species co-occurrence in a multi-level marine mutualism

Geographic range size and species morphology determines the organization of sponge host-guest interaction networks across tropical coral reefs

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