Nutritional input from dinoflagellate symbionts in reef-building corals is minimal during planula larval life stage.

ABSTRACT: Dispersion of larval offspring is of fundamental ecological importance to sessile marine organisms. Photosymbiotic planulae emitted by many reef-forming corals may travel over large distances before settling to form a new colony. It is not clear whether the metabolic requirements of these planula larvae are met exclusively with lipid and protein reservoirs inherited from the mother colony or when metabolic inputs from their endosymbiotic dinoflagellates become important. Pulse-chase experiments using [(13)C]bicarbonate and [(15)N]nitrate, combined with subcellular structural and isotopic imaging of freshly emitted symbiotic larvae from the coral Pocillopora damicornis, show that metabolic input from the dinoflagellates is minimal in the planulae compared with adult colonies. The larvae are

SUBMITTER: Kopp C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4820372 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature