Epidermal nutrition of the alcyonarian Heteroxenia fuscescens (Ehrb.): absorption of dissolved organic material and lost endogenous photosynthates

Summary

The trophic strategies were studied of Heteroxenia fuscescens living in shallow tropical waters. Structural and physiological adaptations show that particulate food is of less nutritional importance than the uptake of organic material dissolved in the sea, the utilization of assimilates of cytosymbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) and even the symbionts themselves. The external and internal surfaces of the tentacles are enlarged by featherlike pinnules, on the one hand facilitating the epidermal uptake of dissolved organic compounds and on the other offering wellilluminated spaces in which large numbers of zooxanthellae can be ‘cultivated’.

Zooxanthellae expelled from gastrodermal cells may be taken up by the mesenteric filaments of the dorsal mesenteries, where they are often decomposed and utilized. The transport of photo-assimilates from the gastrodermis to the epidermis through the mesogloea takes place at a low rate. Most of the released assimilates of the symbionts appear in the coelenteron. One fraction of these assimilates is distributed within the gastric channel system and can be taken up by developing stages living there; another fraction reaches the epidermis extracorporally via the pharynx and the sea. Thus both the pharynx and the epidermis absorb these photo-assimilates. The epidermal uptake capacity serves two main purposes: (1) active uptake and incorporation of external organic material dissolved in the sea; (2) reabsorption of internal, self-produced organic material, i.e. reduction of the loss of endogenous compounds escaping from the gastric cavity necessarily due to the polyfunctionality of the coelenteron.