Recruitment Pattern of the Barnacle Semibalanus balanoides Using Time-series Data

Time-series data is important for understanding long-term settlement and recruitment patterns of benthic marine invertebrate species and can be used to track changes in environmental stressors, such as climate change. Previous research examined settlement preference of the barnacle Semibalanus balanoides for micro- or macro-habitat. Highest settlement occurred on natural quadrats 5 and 9 but not on the replicas of sites 5 and 9 placed elsewhere in the intertidal, showing settlement preference depends on macro-habitat and not on micro-habitat. The goal of this project was to see if the settlement patterns of S. balanoides were the same in previous years. Adult barnacles that were scraped off the rocks before the replica panels were installed, which shows that they successfully recruited for at least one season, were separated according to their specific quadrat and frozen. Then, individual barnacles from each quadrat were counted and aged using light microscopy. This told us if there were similar settlement and recruitment patterns in previous years compared to those seen in 2011. Site 9 had the highest number of settlers, which is concurrent with the results from the previous study. This study shows that S. balanoides exhibited settlement preference for macro-habitat for two seasons, which helps us understand the long-term settlement and recruitment patterns of this species.