Why do floating structures create novel habitats for subtidal epibiota?

Floating pontoons create novel habitats for subtidal epibiota.

Urban structures in the form of pontoons and pilings represent major coastal habitats for marine organisms and understanding the factors causing abundances of organisms to differ between these and natural habitat has been neglected in the study of coastal ecology. It has been proposed that composition of substrata explain differences previously described between subtidal assemblages of epibiota...

Surface composition and orientation interact to affect subtidal epibiota.

Settlement panels were used to evaluate the effects of composition of the substratum (sandstone, concrete, wood) and orientation (vertical, horizontal undersides) on subtidal epibiota. It was predicted that both factors would influence the development of epibiotic assemblages, but that differences due to composition would be less marked on horizontal undersides compared to vertical panels. Diff...

Modified Habitats Influence Kelp Epibiota via Direct and Indirect Effects

Addition of man-made structures alters abiotic and biotic characteristics of natural habitats, which can influence abundances of biota directly and/or indirectly, by altering the ecology of competitors or predators. Marine epibiota in modified habitats were used to test hypotheses to distinguish between direct and indirect processes. In Sydney Harbour, kelps on pier-pilings supported greater co...

Why Do Protein Structures Recur?

Protein tertiary structures exhibit an observable degeneracy in nature. This paper examines the connection between a protein motif’s abundance in nature and its designability as measured by in silico methods. After generating a set of protein structures, we evaluated each structure’s abundance in nature, ratio of possible contacts (contact degree) and in silico designability. Our results showed...

Why Do Stem Cells Create Such Public Controversy?