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Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica
There is a wealth of published information on the epibiont communities of sea turtles, yet many of these studies have exclusively sampled epibionts found only on the carapace. Considering that epibionts may be found on almost all body-surfaces and that it is highly plausible to expect different regi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6730992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31490927 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218838 |
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author | Robinson, Nathan J. Lazo-Wasem, Emily M. Butler, Brett O. Lazo-Wasem, Eric A. Zardus, John D. Pinou, Theodora |
author_facet | Robinson, Nathan J. Lazo-Wasem, Emily M. Butler, Brett O. Lazo-Wasem, Eric A. Zardus, John D. Pinou, Theodora |
author_sort | Robinson, Nathan J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | There is a wealth of published information on the epibiont communities of sea turtles, yet many of these studies have exclusively sampled epibionts found only on the carapace. Considering that epibionts may be found on almost all body-surfaces and that it is highly plausible to expect different regions of the body to host distinct epibiont taxa, there is a need for quantitative information on the spatial variation of epibiont communities on turtles. To achieve this, we measured how total epibiont abundance and biomass on olive ridley turtles Lepidochelys olivacea varies among four body-areas of the hosts (n = 30). We showed that epibiont loads on olive ridleys are higher, both in terms of number and biomass, on the skin than they are on the carapace or plastron. This contrasts with previous findings for other hard-shelled sea turtles, where epibionts are usually more abundant on the carapace or plastron. Moreover, the arguably most ubiquitous epibiont taxon for other hard-shelled sea turtles, the barnacle Chelonibia spp., only occurred in relatively low numbers on olive ridleys and the barnacles Stomatolepas elegans and Platylepas hexastylos are far more abundant. We postulate that these differences between the epibiont communities of different sea turtle taxa could indicate that the carapaces of olive ridley turtles provide a more challenging substratum for epibionts than do the hard shells of other sea turtles. In addition, we conclude that it is important to conduct full body surveys when attempting to produce a holistic qualitative or quantitative characterization of the epibiont communities of sea turtles. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6730992 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-67309922019-09-16 Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica Robinson, Nathan J. Lazo-Wasem, Emily M. Butler, Brett O. Lazo-Wasem, Eric A. Zardus, John D. Pinou, Theodora PLoS One Research Article There is a wealth of published information on the epibiont communities of sea turtles, yet many of these studies have exclusively sampled epibionts found only on the carapace. Considering that epibionts may be found on almost all body-surfaces and that it is highly plausible to expect different regions of the body to host distinct epibiont taxa, there is a need for quantitative information on the spatial variation of epibiont communities on turtles. To achieve this, we measured how total epibiont abundance and biomass on olive ridley turtles Lepidochelys olivacea varies among four body-areas of the hosts (n = 30). We showed that epibiont loads on olive ridleys are higher, both in terms of number and biomass, on the skin than they are on the carapace or plastron. This contrasts with previous findings for other hard-shelled sea turtles, where epibionts are usually more abundant on the carapace or plastron. Moreover, the arguably most ubiquitous epibiont taxon for other hard-shelled sea turtles, the barnacle Chelonibia spp., only occurred in relatively low numbers on olive ridleys and the barnacles Stomatolepas elegans and Platylepas hexastylos are far more abundant. We postulate that these differences between the epibiont communities of different sea turtle taxa could indicate that the carapaces of olive ridley turtles provide a more challenging substratum for epibionts than do the hard shells of other sea turtles. In addition, we conclude that it is important to conduct full body surveys when attempting to produce a holistic qualitative or quantitative characterization of the epibiont communities of sea turtles. Public Library of Science 2019-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6730992/ /pubmed/31490927 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218838 Text en © 2019 Robinson et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Robinson, Nathan J. Lazo-Wasem, Emily M. Butler, Brett O. Lazo-Wasem, Eric A. Zardus, John D. Pinou, Theodora Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica |
title | Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica |
title_full | Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica |
title_fullStr | Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica |
title_full_unstemmed | Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica |
title_short | Spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at Playa Ostional, Costa Rica |
title_sort | spatial distribution of epibionts on olive ridley sea turtles at playa ostional, costa rica |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6730992/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31490927 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218838 |
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