RETRACTED: Reef fishes can recognize bleached habitat during settlement: sea anemone bleaching alters anemonefish host selection

Abstract

Understanding how bleaching impacts the settlement of symbiotic habitat specialists and whether there is flexibility in settlement choices with regard to habitat quality is essential given our changing climate. We used five anemonefishes (Amphiprion clarkii, Amphiprion latezonatus, Amphiprion ocellaris, Amphiprion percula and Premnas biaculeatus) and three host sea anemones (Entacmaea quadricolor, Heteractis crispa and Heteractis magnifica) in pairedchoice flume experiments to determine whether habitat naive juveniles have the olfactory capabilities to distinguish between unbleached and bleached hosts, and how this may affect settlement decisions. All anemonefishes were able to distinguish between bleached and unbleached hosts, and responded only to chemical cues from species-specific host anemones irrespective of health status, indicating a lack of flexibility in host use. While bleached hosts were selected as habitat, this occurred only when unbleached options were unavailable, with the exception of A. latezonatus, which showed strong preferences for H. crispa regardless of health. This study highlights the potential deleterious indirect impacts of declining habitat quality during larval settlement in habitat specialists, which could be important in the field, given that bleaching events are becoming increasingly common.

Staging and normal table of postembryonic development of the clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris)

“…The false clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris (Cuvier 1830) is the most widely used coral reef fish in a laboratory setting, as it is relatively easy to rear in aquaria . Living in symbiosis with sea anemones ( Stichodactyla gigantea, S. mertensii, Heteractis magnifica ), this clownfish is native to the Indo‐West Pacific region from Indo‐Malayan Archipelago to the Philippines and northwestern Australia.…”

“…Living in symbiosis with sea anemones ( Stichodactyla gigantea, S. mertensii, Heteractis magnifica ), this clownfish is native to the Indo‐West Pacific region from Indo‐Malayan Archipelago to the Philippines and northwestern Australia. A. ocellaris has been used as a model for ecological studies; groups have assessed the sensory abilities of reef fish larvae and the impact of environmental perturbations on habitat and predation detection . Its embryonic development has been precisely described, and classical techniques of developmental biology, including in situ hybridization, have been successfully performed on clownfish embryos …”

“…The false clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris (Cuvier 1830) is the most widely used coral reef fish in a laboratory setting, as it is relatively easy to rear in aquaria. [20][21][22][23][24] Living in symbiosis with sea anemones (Stichodactyla gigantea, S. mertensii, Heteractis magnifica), this clownfish is native to the Indo-West Pacific region from Indo-Malayan Archipelago to the Philippines and northwestern Australia. A. ocellaris has been used as a model for ecological studies; groups have assessed the sensory abilities of reef fish larvae and the impact of environmental perturbations on habitat and predation detection.…”

“…A. ocellaris has been used as a model for ecological studies; groups have assessed the sensory abilities of reef fish larvae and the impact of environmental perturbations on habitat and predation detection. 16,24,25 Its embryonic development has been precisely described, [26][27][28] and classical techniques of developmental biology, including in situ hybridization, have been successfully performed on clownfish embryos. 29,30 A. ocellaris belongs to the Pomacentridae family, which comprises 30 species (29 Amphiprion and 1 Premnas) 31,32 and more than 300 species of damselfish.…”

Finding Nemo’s Genes: A chromosome‐scale reference assembly of the genome of the orange clownfishAmphiprion percula

“…It is also one of the most important species for studying the ecology and evolution of coral reef fishes. The orange clownfish is used as a model species to study patterns and processes of social organization (Buston & Wong, 2014;Buston, Bogdanowicz, Wong, & Harrison, 2007;Wong, Uppaluri, Medina, Seymour, & Buston, 2016), sex change (Buston, 2003), mutualism (Schmiege, D'Aloia, & Buston, 2017), habitat selection (Dixson et al, 2008;Elliott & Mariscal, 2001;Scott & Dixson, 2016), lifespan (Buston & García, 2007) and predator-prey interactions (Dixson, 2012;Manassa, Dixson, McCormick, & Chivers, 2013). It has been central to ground-breaking research into the scale of larval dispersal and population connectivity in marine fishes (Almany et al, 2017;Pinsky et al, 2017;Planes, Jones, & Thorrold, 2009;Salles et al, 2016) and how this influences the efficacy of marine protected areas (Berumen et al, 2012;Planes et al, 2009).…”