Variable effects of substrate colour and microtexture on sessile marine taxa in Australian estuaries
Schaefer, Nina, Bishop, Melanie J., Bugnot, Ana B., Herbert, Brett, Hoey, Andrew S., Mayer-Pinto, Mariana, Sherman, Craig D.H., Foster-Thorpe, Cian, Vozzo, Maria L., and Dafforn, Katherine A. (2024) Variable effects of substrate colour and microtexture on sessile marine taxa in Australian estuaries. Biofouling, 40 (2). pp. 223-234.
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Abstract
Concrete infrastructure in coastal waters is increasing. While adding complex habitat and manipulating concrete mixtures to enhance biodiversity have been studied, field investigations of sub-millimetre-scale complexity and substrate colour are lacking. Here, the interacting effects of ‘colour’ (white, grey, black) and ‘microtexture’ (smooth, 0.5 mm texture) on colonisation were assessed at three sites in Australia. In Townsville, no effects of colour or microtexture were observed. In Sydney, spirorbid polychaetes occupied more space on smooth than textured tiles, but there was no effect of microtexture on serpulid polychaetes, bryozoans and algae. In Melbourne, barnacles were more abundant on black than white tiles, while serpulid polychaetes showed opposite patterns and ascidians did not vary with treatments. These results suggest that microtexture and colour can facilitate colonisation of some taxa. The context-dependency of the results shows that inclusion of these factors into marine infrastructure designs needs to be carefully considered.
| Item ID: | 87522 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1029-2454 |
| Keywords: | complexity, Ecological engineering, sessile species, temperate, tropics |
| Copyright Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Dec 2025 23:19 |
| FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 60% 40 ENGINEERING > 4011 Environmental engineering > 401199 Environmental engineering not elsewhere classified @ 40% |
| SEO Codes: | 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 100% |
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