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A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds

Seagrass beds provide a variety of ecosystem services, both within and outside the bounds of the habitat itself. Here we use environmental DNA (eDNA) amplicons to analyze a broad cross-section of taxa from ecological communities in and immediately surrounding eelgrass (Zostera marina). Sampling seaw...

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Autores principales: Jacobs-Palmer, Emily, Gallego, Ramón, Ramón-Laca, Ana, Kunselman, Emily, Cribari, Kelly, Horwith, Micah, Kelly, Ryan P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7147434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32292651
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8869
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author Jacobs-Palmer, Emily
Gallego, Ramón
Ramón-Laca, Ana
Kunselman, Emily
Cribari, Kelly
Horwith, Micah
Kelly, Ryan P.
author_facet Jacobs-Palmer, Emily
Gallego, Ramón
Ramón-Laca, Ana
Kunselman, Emily
Cribari, Kelly
Horwith, Micah
Kelly, Ryan P.
author_sort Jacobs-Palmer, Emily
collection PubMed
description Seagrass beds provide a variety of ecosystem services, both within and outside the bounds of the habitat itself. Here we use environmental DNA (eDNA) amplicons to analyze a broad cross-section of taxa from ecological communities in and immediately surrounding eelgrass (Zostera marina). Sampling seawater along transects extending alongshore outward from eelgrass beds, we demonstrate that eDNA provides meter-scale resolution of communities in the field. We evaluate eDNA abundance indices for 13 major phylogenetic groups of marine and estuarine taxa along these transects, finding highly local changes linked with proximity to Z. marina for a diverse group of dinoflagellates, and for no other group of taxa. Eelgrass habitat is consistently associated with dramatic reductions in dinoflagellate abundance both within the contiguous beds and for at least 15 m outside, relative to nearby sites without eelgrass. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that eelgrass-associated communities have allelopathic effects on dinoflagellates, and that these effects can extend in a halo beyond the bounds of the contiguous beds. Because many dinoflagellates are capable of forming harmful algal blooms (HABs) toxic to humans and other animal species, the apparent salutary effect of eelgrass habitat on neighboring waters has important implications for public health as well as shellfish aquaculture and harvesting.
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spelling pubmed-71474342020-04-14 A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds Jacobs-Palmer, Emily Gallego, Ramón Ramón-Laca, Ana Kunselman, Emily Cribari, Kelly Horwith, Micah Kelly, Ryan P. PeerJ Ecology Seagrass beds provide a variety of ecosystem services, both within and outside the bounds of the habitat itself. Here we use environmental DNA (eDNA) amplicons to analyze a broad cross-section of taxa from ecological communities in and immediately surrounding eelgrass (Zostera marina). Sampling seawater along transects extending alongshore outward from eelgrass beds, we demonstrate that eDNA provides meter-scale resolution of communities in the field. We evaluate eDNA abundance indices for 13 major phylogenetic groups of marine and estuarine taxa along these transects, finding highly local changes linked with proximity to Z. marina for a diverse group of dinoflagellates, and for no other group of taxa. Eelgrass habitat is consistently associated with dramatic reductions in dinoflagellate abundance both within the contiguous beds and for at least 15 m outside, relative to nearby sites without eelgrass. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that eelgrass-associated communities have allelopathic effects on dinoflagellates, and that these effects can extend in a halo beyond the bounds of the contiguous beds. Because many dinoflagellates are capable of forming harmful algal blooms (HABs) toxic to humans and other animal species, the apparent salutary effect of eelgrass habitat on neighboring waters has important implications for public health as well as shellfish aquaculture and harvesting. PeerJ Inc. 2020-04-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7147434/ /pubmed/32292651 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8869 Text en © 2020 Jacobs-Palmer et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Jacobs-Palmer, Emily
Gallego, Ramón
Ramón-Laca, Ana
Kunselman, Emily
Cribari, Kelly
Horwith, Micah
Kelly, Ryan P.
A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds
title A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds
title_full A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds
title_fullStr A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds
title_full_unstemmed A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds
title_short A halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds
title_sort halo of reduced dinoflagellate abundances in and around eelgrass beds
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7147434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32292651
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8869
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