{"id":60417,"date":"2012-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-scientists-marine-plants-can-flee-to-avoid-predators\/"},"modified":"2012-10-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T00:00:00","slug":"uri-scientists-marine-plants-can-flee-to-avoid-predators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/10\/uri-scientists-marine-plants-can-flee-to-avoid-predators\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 scientists: Marine plants can flee to avoid predators"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tFirst observation of predator avoidance behavior by phytoplankton<\/p>\n

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 October 1, 2012 \u2013 Scientists at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography have made the first observation of a predator avoidance behavior by a species of phytoplankton, a microscopic marine plant. \tSusanne Menden-Deuer, associate professor of oceanography, and doctoral student Elizabeth Harvey made the unexpected observation while studying the interactions between phytoplankton and zooplankton.<\/p>\n


\n\tTheir discovery will be published in the September 28 issue of the journal PLOS ONE. The paper can be viewed at http:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0046438.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt has been well observed that phytoplankton can control their movements in the water and move toward light and nutrients,\u201d Menden-Deuer said. \u201cWhat hasn\u2019t been known is that they respond to predators by swimming away from them. We don\u2019t know of any other plants that do this.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWhile imaging 3-dimensional predator-prey interactions, the researchers noted that the phytoplankton Heterosigma akashiwo swam differently in the presence of predators, and groups of them shifted their distribution away from the predators. <\/p>\n


\nIn a series of laboratory experiments, Menden-Deuer and Harvey found that the phytoplankton not only flee when in the presence of the predatory zooplankton, but they also flee when in water that had previously contained the predators. They found only a minimal effect when the phytoplankton were exposed to predators that do not feed on phytoplankton.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThe phytoplankton can clearly sense the predator is there. They flee even from the chemical scent of the predator but are most agitated when sensing a feeding predator,\u201d said Menden-Deuer.<\/p>\n


\n\tWhen the scientists provided the phytoplankton with a refuge to avoid the predator \u2013 an area of low salinity water that the predators cannot tolerate \u2013 the phytoplankton moved to the refuge. <\/p>\n


\n\tThe important question these observations raise, according to Menden-Deuer, is how these interactions affect the survival of the prey species. <\/p>\n


\nMeasuring survival in the same experiments, the researchers found that fleeing helps the alga survive. Given a chance, the predators will eat all of the phytoplankton in one day if the algae have no safe place in which to escape, but they double every 48 hours if they have a refuge available to flee from predators. Fleeing makes the difference between life and death for this species, said Menden-Deuer.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cOne of the puzzling things about some phytoplankton blooms is that they suddenly appear,\u201d she said. \u201cGrowth and nutrient availability don\u2019t always explain the formation of blooms. Our observation of algal fleeing from predators is another mechanism for how blooms could form. Amazingly, looking at individual microscopic behaviors can help to explain a macroscopic phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe researchers say there is no way of knowing how common this behavior is or how many other species of phytoplankton also flee from predators, since this is the first observation of such a behavior.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIf it is common among phytoplankton, then it would be a very important process,\u201d Menden-Deuer said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if other species had that capacity. It would be very beneficial to them.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tIn future studies, she hopes to observe these behaviors in the ocean and couple it with genetic investigations.<\/p>\n


\n\tFunding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The study was conducted, in part, at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Marine Life Science Facility, which is supported by the Rhode Island Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.<\/p>\n


\nPredatory zooplankton Favella sp. (left) and its algal prey Heterosigma akashiwo.

\nPhoto credit: Elizabeth Harvey (GSO). Digital enhancement by Cynthia

\nBeth Rubin (RISD).<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First observation of predator avoidance behavior by phytoplankton NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 October 1, 2012 \u2013 Scientists at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography have made the first observation of a predator avoidance behavior by a species of phytoplankton, a microscopic marine plant. Susanne Menden-Deuer, associate professor of oceanography, and doctoral student Elizabeth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}