Coral reefs are in dramatic global decline, with seaweeds commonly replacing corals. It is unclear, however, whether seaweeds harm corals directly or colonize opportunistically following their decline and then suppress coral recruitment. In the Caribbean and tropical Pacific, we show that, when protected from herbivores, approximately 40 to 70% of common seaweeds cause bleaching and death of co...

Seaweeds are of economic and ecological importance, and for centuries have been used in food, phycocolloid, and pharmaceutical industries. With the advance development of computational biology and bioinformatics, the study of seaweeds is entering a new revolutionary phase. Molecular genetic study and gene discovery in seaweeds will greatly facilitate the process of deciphering the physiology, b...

Seaweeds have an extremely numerous of species in the world and been able to be divided into several developmental systems. Broadly, three types of seaweeds can be defined according to their color: brown seaweeds, green seaweeds, and red seaweeds. Thousands of years ago, mankind used seaweeds as food and medicine. Seaweed extracts are gaining increasing attention due to their unique composition...

Seagrasses are important habitat-formers and ecosystem engineers that are under threat from bloom-forming seaweeds. These seaweeds have been suggested to outcompete the seagrasses, particularly when facilitated by eutrophication, causing regime shifts where green meadows and clear waters are replaced with unstable sediments, turbid waters, hypoxia, and poor habitat conditions for fishes and inv...

Studies were conducted to evaluate nutritional qualities of two edible green seaweeds, Caulerpa lentillifera and Ulva reticulata, with a view to their utilization in human nutrition. The proximate composition, mineral and vitamin contents, free fatty acid, and amino acid profiles were investigated. Protein and ash contents were the two most abundant components in these seaweeds. Caulerpa lentil...

This study pointed to the assessment of the chemical composition (F, Ca, Mg, Na, K, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, Cr, Cd, and carbohydrate) of different marine seaweeds (red, green, and brown) from the Egyptian Mediterranean Sea coast. The results showed that green seaweeds supplied better calcium sources than the red and brown ones. Also, red and brown seaweeds showed higher averages of Na and K tha...

Plants optimise their resistance to herbivores by regulating deterrent responses on demand. Induction of anti-herbivory defences can occur directly in grazed plants or from emission of risk cues to the environment, which modifies interactions of adjacent plants with, for instance, their consumers. This study confirmed the induction of anti-herbivory responses by water-borne risk cues between ad...

There is a greater quantity and diversity of lipophilic secondary metabolites produced by seaweeds within tropical relative to temperate regions. Coevolutionary arms-race theory predicts that tropical herbivores should more readily tolerate consuming chemically-rich seaweeds than do temperate herbivores, however, tests of this prediction are rare. We assessed the willingness to consume freeze-d...

It is widely assumed that the production of secondary metabolites against grazing and fouling is costly for seaweeds in terms of metabolic energy and should therefore be reduced under conditions of resource limitation. Here we tested the hypothesis that anti-herbivore defenses and bioactivity against mussels in 4 brown seaweeds from northern-central Chile will be reduced when light is limited. ...

Coral reefs are in dramatic global decline due to a host of local- and global-scale anthropogenic disturbances that suppress corals and enhance seaweeds. This decline is exacerbated, and recovery made less likely, due to over-fishing of herbivores that normally limit seaweed effects on corals. Seaweeds were known to suppress coral reproduction and recruitment, but in a recent study, we demonstr...