Percepção químico-olfativa de dissodactylus crinitichelis Moreira, 1901

• Autor(a) principal: Souza, Juliana de Andrade
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFS
• Texto Completo: http://ri.ufs.br/jspui/handle/riufs/8793
• topic: Biologia; Ensino de biologia; Brachyura; Echinoidea; Crustáceo; CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS

Symbiotic interactions are very diverse in marine environments and are characterized as an alliance between two organisms, based on the benefits the symbionts receive from their hosts. The host, generally the larger organism, provides resources that are important for the symbiont life cycle, as refuge, food source and mates. However, the getting of those resources is given by the capability of the symbiont of recognizing its host, and the recognition is based on chemical cues released by the host in the water. This chemical perception can indicate the symbiont besides the host location, the condition and quality of the resource. Symbiont crustaceans are organisms that have demonstrated this capacity of chemical perception of their hosts. In this study we assessed the chemical perception of Dissodactylus crinitichelis for its sand dollar host Encope emarginata in different treatments (normal, stressed and with injury), to understand if host choice and host-switching of this symbiont are influenced by the host’s condition. To measure the host’s chemical recognition, D. crinitichelis were exposed in an olfatometric apparatus with control water, normal host water and stressed host water. Later, the crabs were exposed to a normal host and an injured host, to evaluate choice and switching among hosts. The results obtained in the olfatometric tests showed that D. crinitichelis have preference for its host in normal conditions. The stress condition of the sand dollars acted as a repellent for the crabs that preferred to avoid those hosts. In the same way, symbionts avoided the injured sand dollars while preferred the “normal” ones. The physical and physiological conditions represent the quality of the hosts and signalize to the symbionts the vantages and disadvantages of colonizing them, also influencing the host-switching pattern of D. crinitichelis.