Competition between reef-building corals and benthic algae is of key importance for reef dynamics. These interactions occur on many spatial scales, ranging from chemical to regional. Using microprobes, 16S rDNA pyrosequencing and underwater surveys, we examined the interactions between the reef-building coral Montastraea annularis and four types of benthic algae. The macroalgae Dictyota bartayr...

Life on Earth as we know it would not be possible without the evolution of plants, and without the transition of plants to live on land. Land plants (also known as embryophytes) are a monophyletic lineage embedded within the green algae. Green algae as a whole are among the oldest eukaryotic lineages documented in the fossil record, and are well over a billion years old, while land plants are a...

The coral reef benthos is primarily colonized by corals and algae, which are often in direct competition with one another for space. Numerous studies have shown that coral-associated Bacteria are different from the surrounding seawater and are at least partially species specific (i.e. the same bacterial species on the same coral species). Here we extend these microbial studies to four of the ma...

Many coral reefs in the Caribbean experienced substantial changes in their benthic community composition during the last decades. This often resulted in phase shifts from scleractinian coral dominance to that by other benthic invertebrate or algae. However, knowledge about how the related role of coral-algae contacts may negatively affect corals is scarce. Therefore, benthic community compositi...

Turf algae are becoming more abundant on coral reefs worldwide, but their effects on other benthic organisms remain poorly described. To describe the general characteristics of competitive interactions between corals and turf algae, we determined the occurrence and outcomes of coral-turf algal interactions among different coral growth forms (branching, upright, massive, encrusting, plating, and...

(also known as array genomic comparative hybridization, or array CGH) with established diagnostic procedures including G-banded karyotype and fragile X testing. Arrays for CMA tests are widely available, but have not yet entered general practice to the extent that generally agreed standards and references exist. Applying CMA to the entire genomes of 697 ASD patients, Shen et al. detected clinic...

Nutrients especially nitrate and phosphate are the main limiting factors of algal growth in aquatic ecosystems. The present study was conducted to examine the effects of different concentrations of nitrate and phosphate simultaneously on growth of macro algae, Ulva rigida. For this purpose, algae were fed various concentrations of nitrate and phosphate during 28 days in 300 L tanks in the form ...