Abstract
Mesoalgae play a key role in shallow coastal ecosystems. Composed of small macroalgae, intermixed with filamentous cyanobacteria and colonial diatoms, these multi-specific, but minute (μm–cm) assemblages form complex three-dimensional structures, providing shelter for different unicellular (e.g. bacteria, diatoms, dinoflagellates) and multicellular (e.g. fishes, invertebrates) organisms. Characterized by a high colonization potential, these primary producers are observed to bloom and overgrow disturbed areas (e.g. damaged coral reefs, urchin barrens), and play a crucial role in terms of invasion and colonizing new habitats. Driven by anthropogenic environmental changes, mesoalgae are receiving considerable attention in current marine research. So far, most studies approach mesoalgae at the functional group level (e.g. turf algae, microphytobenthos), whereas only few studies tackle the importance of species-specific interactions, which play an important role in benthic ecology (e.g. coral-algal competition and disease spreading). To facilitate the study of not only the presence but also the composition and the structure of these habitat formers, we provide a new approach combining inexpensive fixation methodology with modern confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), to study minute macroalgal structures (e.g. germlings, reproductive structures), and investigate their relation to microphytobenthic components (e.g. diatom colonies). Detailed procedures for mounting, staining and imaging phytobenthic communities are provided.
About the authors
Anna Fricke is a researcher at the Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía (IADO, Argentina) and guest researcher at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (Germany). She was awarded a PhD in Natural Sciences jointly by the University of Bremen and the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (Germany) for her work on succession patterns of tropical turf algae, and was enrolled in International Graduate School for Marine Sciences “Global Change in the Marine Realm” (GLOMAR, MARUM Bremen). In her research she addresses the biodiversity and ecophysiology of benthic algal communities at different latitudes, ranging from descriptive to experimental studies in relation to environmental changes.
Terue C. Kihara is a researcher at the German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research, Senckenberg am Meer. She holds a PhD in Bioscience at Department of Zoology at Universidade de São Paulo and has research background is in scanning electron and confocal laser scanning microscopy. She is currently working in many projects involving meio- and macrofauna imaging combined to the investigation of the fauna from the Indian Ocean hydrothermal vents.
Mona Hoppenrath is head of the Division of Marine Botany at the German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research and a private lecturer at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. She studied Biology in Göttingen and received her doctorate in Hamburg in 2000 (on a thesis about the taxonomy and ecology of marine sand-dwelling flagellates). As a post-doc she worked on phytoplankton taxonomy at the Biological Institute at Helgoland and the Wadden Sea Station Sylt of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany until transferring to the University of British Columbia, Canada in 2004. Her research focusses on the taxonomy, systematics and phylogeny of dinoflagellates.
Acknowledgments
We thank Dr. Germán A. Kopprio for support in the field and Dr. Mirta Teichberg and her group supporting A. Fricke’s work at the facilities of the ZMT.
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