Life Sciences Commons^™

Symbiont Presence And Identity Influence Life History Strategies Of A Temperate Sea Anemone, Brian L. Bingham, James L. Dimond, Gisele Muller-Parker

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Along the North American Pacific coast, the common intertidal sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima engages in facultative, flexible symbioses with Symbiodinium muscatinei (a dinoflagellate) and Elliptochloris marina (a chloro- phyte). Determining how symbiotic state affects host fitness is essential to understanding the ecological significance of engaging in such flexible relationships with diverse symbionts. Fitness consequences of hosting S. muscatinei, E. marina or negligible numbers of either symbiont (aposymbiosis) were investigated by measuring growth, cloning by fission and gonad development after 8.5 – 11 months of sustained exposure to high, moderate or low irradiance under seasonal environmental conditions. Both symbiotic state …