Abstract
Marine-fouling organisms, such as barnacles and mussels, cause serious problems by settling on ship hulls and submerged artificial structures in addition to natural habitats. To develop novel antifouling technologies, including new antifouling paints, bioassays are indispensable for assessing the efficacy of these technologies and their environmental impacts. Since biofouling is a complicated biological event, it is difficult to conduct biofouling assays without using fouling organisms. Although detailed genetic information on most of the fouling organisms is unknown and methods to use these organisms for lab-experiments have not been well established, the intertidal barnacle Amphibalanus amphitrite is thought to be a model creature for larval settlement assays to investigate settlement mechanisms and antifouling technologies. This review describes bioassays using sessile organisms such as A. amphitrite conducted for my studies on barnacle larval settlement and the development of antifouling paints.
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