ArticleThe ISME journal2021
Predator-induced defence in a dinoflagellate generates benefits without direct costs.
Article in The ISME journal, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Fear of grazing rivals the toxin-inducing effects of nutrients in two marine harmful algae - a meta-analysis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Pooled it
- Article
- Multiple defense is an effective antipredator strategy in dinoflagellates.ISME communications · 2025Article
- The ciliateWater research X · 2024Article
- Algal blooms in the ocean: hot spots for chemically mediated microbial interactions.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2024Review
- Mass spectroscopy reveals compositional differences in copepodamides from limnic and marine copepods.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Genomic copy number variability at the genus, species and population levels impacts in situ ecological analyses of dinoflagellates and harmful algal blooms.ISME communications · 2023Article
- Short-Term Interactions ofToxins · 2023Article
- Single-cell adaptations shape evolutionary transitions to multicellularity in green algae.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Deciphering interactions between the marine dinoflagellate Prorocentrum lima and the fungus Aspergillus pseudoglaucus.Environmental microbiology · 2023Article
- Article
- Evolution of toxins as a public good in phytoplankton.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Costs and benefits of predator-induced defence in a toxic diatom.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Grazer-Induced Chemical Defense in a Microcystin-Producing Microcystis aeruginosa (Cyanobacteria) Exposed to Daphnia gessneri Infochemicals.Journal of chemical ecology · 2021Article
- Direct and indirect effects of copepod grazers on community structure.Journal of plankton researchArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Inducible defences in phytoplankton are often assumed to come at a cost to the organism, but trade-offs have proven hard to establish experimentally. A reason for this may be that some trade-off costs only become evident under resource-limiting conditions. To explore the effect of nutrient limitation on trade-offs in toxin-producing dinoflagellates, we induced toxin production in Alexandrium minutum by chemical cues from copepods under different levels of nitrogen limitation. The effects were both nitrogen- and grazer-concentration dependent. Induced cells had higher cellular toxin content and a larger fraction of the cells was rejected by a copepod, demonstrating the clear benefits of toxin production. Induced cells also had a higher carbon and nitrogen content, despite up to 25% reduction in cell size. Unexpectedly, induced cells seemed to grow faster than controls, likely owing to a higher specific nutrient affinity due to reduced size. We thus found no clear trade-offs, rather the opposite. However, indirect ecological costs that do not manifest under laboratory conditions may be important. Inducing appropriate defence traits in response to threat-specific warning signals may also prevent larger cumulative costs from expressing several defensive traits simultaneously.
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Registered trials
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