Investigating the Feeding Habits and Plastic Ingestion of Sea Anemones (Actinia tenebrosa and Oulactis muscosa) on the Eastern Coast of Australia

• Grant number: 24/05116-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2024
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Oceanography - Biological Oceanography
• Principal Investigator: Sérgio Nascimento Stampar
• Grantee: Thaís Barbosa Santos
• Supervisor: Michael Stat
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Newcastle, Australia
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/06274-1 - Composition and spatio-temporal variation of Actinia bermudensis and Actinostella flosculifera diet (Cnidaria; Anthozoa; Hexacorallia), BP.DR

Abstract

The feeding process is an ecological process of utmost importance for most living beings, sincethrough its organisms can obtain the energy necessary to carry out various stages that arefundamental in their life cycle. In this way, several groups of animals have already been studied from different perspectives that involve food, however, there are still groups that present little or no information in relation to dietary aspects. One of them is Anthozoa, considered the largest class of the phylum Cnidaria and characterized by having benthic animals. Although the class presents several studies relating to the ecological processes of the food web, many gaps still exist in the group in relation to this topic. Among the orders of this class, Actiniaria is the one with the largest number of studies related to the food process, however, they are focused on certain species of the group. In this way, many species still do not present any information about feeding processes. Consequently, it is extremely important to carry out new studies to understand how these animals act and help maintain aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, the present work aims to characterize the diet of Actinia tenebrosa (Farquhar, 1898) and Oulactis muscosa (Drayton in Dana, 1846) during one year, in two different locations (at Gold Coast andNewcastle) by morphological and molecular analysis of gastrovascular contents (metabarcoding). Additionally, due to the increasing pollution by plastic waste in the marine environment, this project also aims to evaluate the presence of these components in the trophic activity of these two species. Thus, with the data obtained in this research, it will be possible to identify the main classes of Metazoa that are present in the diet of these two species, observe whether there are changes in their diet due to seasonal and latitudinal changes, and, finally, determine if these animals are being affected by plastic pollution.