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Grazer-induced bioluminescence and toxicity in marine dinoflagellates

Grazer-induced bioluminescence and toxicity in marine dinoflagellates

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

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Comment #202 Milad Pourdanandeh @ 2025-03-10 17:33

The link to the repository where "Supplementary code and output" is located will be live later today (2025-03-10) or tomorrow.

/Milad Pourdanandeh

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Authors

Paula Gonzalo-Valmala, Milad Pourdanandeh, Sandra Lage, Erik Selander

Abstract

Marine copepods are the most abundant type of multicellular zooplankton in the global oceans. They imprint their surrounding waters with a unique bouquet of polar lipids; copepodamides. Copepodamides are recognized by prey organisms, who respond by inducing defensive traits including bioluminescence, toxin production, colony size plasticity and structural modifications. Copepodamides are suggested to act as general alarm-cues, but only a limited number of species have been experimentally exposed to copepodamides to date. Here, we quantify bioluminescence and toxin content in response to increasing concentrations of copepodamides in three additional species of marine dinoflagellates: Alexandrium catenella, Protoceratium reticulatum, and Gymnodinium catenatum. All three species up-regulated their defensive traits in response to copepodamide exposure. Neither bioluminescence nor toxin production was associated with measurable costs in terms of reduced growth rates. The results corroborate the role of copepodamides as general alarm-cues in marine phytoplankton. Moreover, the expression of simultaneous defensive traits in A. catenella may confound studies addressing the costs and benefits of these co-varying traits.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2MP7R

Subjects

Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Biology

Keywords

Marine dinoflagellates, Inducible defenses, Copepods, Copepodamides, Bioluminescence, Harmful algae, Paralytic shellfish toxins, Inducible defenses, Copepods, Copepodamides, Bioluminescence, harmful algae, Paralytic shellfish toxins

Dates

Published: 2025-03-10 16:52

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
None

Data and Code Availability Statement:
The data supporting this study is available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14883074

Language:
English