The Ecology of Rafting in the Marine Environment. II. The Rafting Organisms and Community

By M. Thiel, L. Gutow. 2005

554 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Rafting of marine and terrestrial organisms has been reported from a variety of substrata and from all major oceans of the world. Herein we present information on common rafting organisms and on ecological interactions during rafting voyages. An extensive literature review revealed a total of 1206 organisms, for which rafting was confirmed or inferred based on distributional or genetic evidence. Rafting organisms comprised cyanobacteria, algae, protists, invertebrates from most marine but also terrestrial phyla, and even a few terrestrial vertebrates. Marine hydrozoans, bryozoans, crustaceans and gastropods were the most common taxa that had been observed rafting. All major feeding types were represented among rafters, being dominated by grazing/boring and suspension-feeding organisms, which occurred on all floating substrata. Besides these principal trophic groups, predators/scavengers and detritus-feeders were also reported. Motility of rafting organisms was highest on macroalgae and lowest on abiotic substrata such as plastics and volcanic pumice. Important trends were revealed for the reproductive biology of rafting organisms. A high proportion of clonal organisms (Cnidaria and Bryozoa) featured asexual reproduction, often in combination with sexual reproduction. Almost all rafting organisms have internal fertilisation, which may be due to the fact that gamete concentrations in the rafting environment are too low for successful fertilisation of external fertilisers. Following fertilisation, many rafting organisms incubate their offspring in/on their body or deposit embryos in egg masses on rafts. Local recruitment, where offspring settle in the immediate vicinity of parents, is considered an important advantage for establishing persistent local populations on a raft, or in new habitats. Some organisms are obligate rafters, spending their entire life cycle on a raft, but the large majority of reported rafters are considered facultative rafters. These organisms typically live in benthic (or terrestrial) habitats, but may become dispersed while being confined to a floating item. Substratum characteristics (complexity, surface, size) have important effects on the composition of the rafting community. While at sea, ecological interactions (facilitation, competition, predation) contribute to the community succession on rafts. Organisms capable to compete for and exploit resources on a raft (space and food) will be able to persist throughout community succession. The duration of rafting voyages is closely related to rafting distances, which may cover various geographical scales. In chronological order, three features of an organism gain in importance during rafting, these being ability to (1) hold onto floating items, (2) establish and compete successfully, and (3) develop persistent local populations during a long voyage. Small organisms that do not feed on their floating substratum and with asexual reproduction or direct development combine all these features, and appear to be most suited for long-distance dispersal on rafts and successful colonisation after reaching new habitats. All available evidence suggests that rafting is an important process for the population dynamics of many organisms and that it also has had and continues to have a strong influence on coastal biodiversity.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/16c94132b1c2be91520d340c93acfb8f07717f28

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Citations in the corpus

Effects of brooding and broadcasting reproductive modes on the population genetic structure of two Antarctic gastropod molluscs (2011, background): “To explain this, authors have invoked the passive transport of individuals via fronds of seaweed or fragments of sponge dislodged during violent storms, or upon driftwood (e.g. Thiel and Gutow 2005a, b; Richards et al. 2007; Waters et al. 2008).”
GLOBAL ECOLOGY OF THE GIANT KELP MACROCYSTIS : FROM ECOTYPES TO ECOSYSTEMS (2007, background): “Holdfast, mid-water fronds and canopies can retain epifaunal fishes and mobile and sessile invertebrates even when drifting sporophytes travel long distances (Edgar 1987, Vásquez 1993, Helmuth et al. 1994, Hobday 2000a,b,c, Smith 2002, Macaya et al. 2005, Thiel & Gutow 2005a,b).”
Driven by the West Wind Drift? A synthesis of southern temperate marine biogeography, with new directions for dispersalism (2008, background): “Although ecological evidence for the importance of D. antarctica rafting seems compelling (Thiel & Gutow, 2005a,b; Thiel & Haye, 2006), genetic data are lacking.”
Ultraviolet radiation shapes seaweed communities (2006, background): “nisation of defaunated habitats (Thiel and Gutow 2005).”
The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris (2020, background): “…events such as floods, tsunamis and storms are known to play an important role in the release of plastic and other materials into the ocean (e.g. Thiel and Haye 2006, Axelsson and van Sebille 2017, Gündoğdu et al 2018, Hurley et al 2018, Maximenko et al 2018), very little is known about how…”
Has Vicariance or Dispersal Been the Predominant Biogeographic Force in Madagascar? Only Time Will Tell (2006, background): “Finally, given their less stringent life history attributes, credulity is far less strained by hypotheses of long-distance dispersal in plants and invertebrates (Barnes et al. 2006, Cowie & Holland 2006, Monaghan et al. 2005, Thiel & Gutow 2005).”
Rafting on abiotic substrata: properties of floating items and their influence on community succession (2011, background): “Due to these properties (buoyancy and resistance to decay), abiotic substrata survive much longer at the sea surface than most biotic floating substrata, e.g. algae and wood (Thiel & Gutow 2005a).”
Marine litter as habitat and dispersal vector (2015, background): “Previous studies have reported over 1200 taxa that are associated with natural and anthropogenic flotsam (Thiel and Gutow 2005a) and the extreme localities that rafting organisms can reach when transported over large distances by currents and wind (Barnes and Fraser 2003; Barnes and Milner 2005).”
The physical impacts of microplastics on marine organisms: a review. (2013, background): “The most common rafting species are from the phyla Cnidaria, Crustacea and Ectoprocta (Thiel and Gutow, 2005).”
Antarctic Marine Biodiversity: Adaptations, Environments and Responses to Change (2018, background): “Postmetamorphic stages of over 1200 marine species have been identified as being capable of dispersal attached to a range of both natural and man-made substrata (Thiel & Gutow 2005).”
The humboldt current system of northern and central chile : Oceanographic processes, ecological interactions and socioeconomic feedback (2007, methodology): “Moreover and to further complicate things, many species use rafting as an alternative method of long-distance dispersal (Santelices 1990a, Thiel & Gutow 2005).”
The role of molecular genetics in sculpting the future of integrative biogeography (2008, background): “Credulity is even less strained by hypotheses of long-distance dispersal in plants and invertebrates given their less stringent lifehistory attributes (Monaghan et al., 2005; Thiel and Gutow, 2005; Barnes et al., 2006; Cowie and Holland, 2006).”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Freshwater paths across the ocean: molecular phylogeny of the frog Ptychadena newtoni gives insights into amphibian colonization of oceanic islands (2006, background): “For example, a raft may have enough invertebrate food to explain the presence of the São Tomé and Prı́ncipe endemic shrews (Thiel & Gutow, 2005).”
The ecology of rafting in the marine environment. III. Biogeographical and evolutionary consequences (2006, background): “Differences in species composition between rafts may also be due to competitive interactions that are commonly reported from rafting communities (Thiel & Gutow 2005b).”