An alpha2-macroglobulin-like protein is the cue to gregarious settlement of the barnacle Balanus amphitrite.

ABSTRACT: Many benthic marine invertebrates, like barnacles, have a planktonic larval stage whose primary purpose is dispersal. How these species colonize suitable substrata is fundamental to understanding their evolution, population biology, and wider community dynamics. Unlike larval dispersal, settlement occurs on a relatively small spatial scale and involves larval behavior in response to physical and chemical characteristics of the substratum. Biogenic chemical cues have been implicated in this process. Their identification, however, has proven challenging, no more so than for the chemical basis of barnacle gregariousness, which was first described >50 years ago. We now report that a biological cue to gregarious settlement, the settlement-inducing protein complex (SIPC), of the major fouling ba

SUBMITTER: Dreanno C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1599974 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature