Affiliation:
1. Department of Biology, California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8303, USA
Abstract
Sessile organisms exploit a life-history strategy in which adults are immobile and their growth position is determined at settlement. The morphological strategy exploited by these organisms has strong selective value, because it can allow beneficial matching of morphology to environmental and biological conditions. In benthic marine environments, a ‘sheet-tree’ morphology is a classic mechanism exploited by select sessile organisms, and milleporine hydrocorals provide one of the best examples of this strategy. Using 30-year analysis of
Millepora
sp. on the reefs of St. John, US Virgin Islands, I tested for the benefits of a sheet-tree morphology in mediating the ecological success of an important functional group of benthic space holders. The abundance of
Millepora
sp. chaotically changed from 1992 to 2021 in concert with hurricanes, bleaching and macroalgal crowding.
Millepora
sp. responded to these disturbances by exploiting their morphological strategy to increase the use of trees when their sheets were compromised by bleaching and spatial competition with macroalgae, and the use of sheets when their trees were broken by storms. Together, these results reveal the selective value of a plastic sheet-tree morphology, which can be exploited by sessile organisms to respond to decadal-scale variation in environmental conditions.
Funder
National Science Foundation
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Cited by
2 articles.
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