Abstract
Behavioral responses to environmental factors at the planktonic larval stage can have a crucial influence on habitat selection and therefore adult distributions in many benthic organisms. Reef-building corals show strong patterns of zonation across depth or underwater topography, with different suites of species aggregating in different light environments. One potential mechanism driving this pattern is the response of free-swimming larvae to light. However, there is little experimental support for this hypothesis; in particular, there are few direct and quantitative observations of larval behavior in response to light. Here, we analyzed the swimming behavior of larvae of the common reef coral Acropora tenuis under various light conditions. Larvae exhibited a step-down photophobic response, i.e. a marked decrease in swimming speed, in response to a rapid attenuation (step-down) of light intensity. Observations of larvae under different wavelengths indicated that only the loss of blue light (wavelengths between 400 and 500 nm) produced a significant response. Mathematical simulations of this step-down photophobic response indicate that larvae will aggregate in the lighter areas of two-dimensional large rectangular fields. These results suggest that the step-down photophobic response of coral larvae may play an important role in determining where larval settle on the reef.
Highlights
Behavioral responses to environmental factors at the planktonic larval stage can have a crucial influence on habitat selection and adult distributions in many benthic organisms
Acropora tenuis larvae showed a strong step-down photophobic response, and mathematical simulations confirmed that this response causes biased distribution patterns according to light environments
Kawaguti (1945) reported that coral larvae showed positive or no phototaxis under illumination with low light intensity, but the phototactic response became negative under high light intensity[10]
Summary
Behavioral responses to environmental factors at the planktonic larval stage can have a crucial influence on habitat selection and adult distributions in many benthic organisms. Observations of larvae under different wavelengths indicated that only the loss of blue light (wavelengths between 400 and 500 nm) produced a significant response Mathematical simulations of this step-down photophobic response indicate that larvae will aggregate in the lighter areas of two-dimensional large rectangular fields. These results suggest that the step-down photophobic response of coral larvae may play an important role in determining where larval settle on the reef. As in many other benthic marine organisms, habitat selection at the time of larval settlement strongly affects the distribution of adult c orals[8,9]. The settlement site of coral larvae can be affected by light intensity, spectral quality and the colour of the substratum[15,16,17,18,19]
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