Abstract
Marine brown algal species of the genus Fucus are very important as food, shelter and substrate for a large number of associated plant and animal species on the Swedish west coast. The proposed project is aimed at investigating how the structure and diversity in those associated communities are influenced by the genetical architecture of the algal plants, and to determine the inheritance patterns of herbivore resistance and ability of the algal plants to produce chemical defence metabolites. The ultimate goal is to study if, and in that case how, the mentioned variables (biodiversity, resistance, and chemical defences) are influenced by hybridization between different Fucus species. Hybridization between plant species have proven very useful models to study questions concerning community structure, species richness, and inheritance patterns in terrestrial systems, but to my knowledge, there are still no comparable aquatic studies. The proposed project will be performed by a combination of field observations, field experiments, artificial crossing experiments, and genetic and chemical analyses, where the biodiversity of associated communities, resistance, and chemical defence of parent and hybrid Fucus plants are compared.
Sweden