Symbiotic associations between cnidarians\u00a0and photosynthetic dino\ufb02agellates (i.e., zooxanthellae)\u00a0are common in the marine environment. Many symbiotic cnidarians produce o\ufb00spring that are initially nonsymbiotic. These new hosts must acquire symbiotic\u00a0algae from environmental sources. We examined zooxanthella acquisition by laboratory-reared planula larvae\u00a0of the temperate sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima. Larvae ingested zooxanthellae while they were\u00a0feeding. However, the signal that prompted larval\u00a0feeding behavior did not originate from the symbiotic\u00a0algae; the addition of algal cells to larval cultures never\u00a0elicited a feeding response. In contrast, the addition of\u00a0macerated animal tissue from several sources invariably\u00a0generated a strong feeding response, which resulted in\u00a0the larvae indiscriminately ingesting any particulate\u00a0matter that was present, including zooxanthellae or\u00a0other unicellular algae. Ingested zooxanthellae were incorporated into endodermal cells, where they remained\u00a0undigested, while all other ingested material was digested or expelled within 24 h. Our results provide evidence that one source of \u00a0ooxanthellae likely to serve as\u00a0a route of infection in the natural environment is\u00a0zooxanthella-laden mucus egested by anemones. This\u00a0egested material ful\ufb01lled both of the criteria necessary<\/p>\n
for successful infection: it prompted larvae to begin\u00a0feeding and provided an abundant supply of zooxanthellae that were ingested and taken up into endodermal\u00a0cells of the new host.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Symbiotic associations between cnidarians and photosynthetic dino\ufb02agellates (i.e., zooxanthellae) are common in the marine environment. Many symbiotic cnidarians produce o\ufb00spring that are initially nonsymbiotic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1517,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43698],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1517"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/85"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/joschwarz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}