Oysters²（牡蛎） begin their lives as tiny drifters, but when they mature they settle on reefs. New research from North Carolina State University shows that the sounds of the reef may attract the young oysters, helping³ them locate their permanent home. Larval oysters are planktonic⁴（浮游的）, meaning that they cannot swim against or across currents. However, they do have the ability to move up and down within the column of water that they're in. As they mature, they develop a muscular "foot" that they can use to sense the terrain⁵ along the ocean floor. When they find the right spot, they attach themselves and remain there throughout their lives.

 

Ashlee Lillis, an NC State Ph.D. candidate in marine⁶ sciences, wondered how the tiny oysters knew when to drop down and start looking for a home. Scientists know that larval oysters and other bivalves（双壳类）, like clams⁷, respond to some chemical and physical signals in seawater, but Lillis wondered if the sound of the reef played a role.

 

"When you're as small as these larvae⁸, even if you're only 10 or 15 feet up in a water column you wouldn't have any real sense of where you were in terms of the seafloor beneath you," Lillis says. "But an ocean reef has very loud, distinct sounds associated with it. They're noisy enough to be heard by scuba⁹ divers¹⁰ and snorkelers. Even though oysters don't have ears and hear like we do, they might be able to sense the vibration¹¹ from the sounds of the reef."

 

Lillis and her adviser¹² David Eggleston, professor of marine sciences, decided¹³ to test the hypothesis. With help from NC State geophysicist Del Bohnenstiehl, the team first made underwater sound recordings¹⁴ of oyster¹ reefs and the open seafloor. Then they tested larval oysters in the wild and in the lab to determine if the settlement rates increased when they were exposed to reef sounds versus¹⁵ those from further out.

 

The team found an increased settlement rate in both the lab and the wild when the larvae were exposed to reef sounds. Their results appear in PLOS ONE.

 

"The ocean has different soundscapes（音响范围）, just like on land," Lillis says. "Living in a reef is like living in a busy urban area: there are a lot of residents, a lot of activity and a lot of noise. By comparison, the seafloor is more like living in the quiet countryside.

 

"This research is the first step in establishing what normal, healthy reef environments sound like," Lillis adds. "If we can figure out how the noise impacts oysters it may give us strategies for establishing new oyster beds. It might also give us a noninvasive method for keeping tabs on the health of our undersea reefs."

点击收听单词发音