Relationship between growth rate and egg production in the copepodAcartia clausi hudsonica

✍ Scribed by H. Sekiguchi; I. A. McLaren; C. J. Corkett

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 550 KB
• Volume: 58
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0025-3162
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00396124

✦ Synopsis

Egg production by Acartia clausi hudsonica ceases at low concentrations of Isochrysis galbana as food and at high levels reaches a maximum that increases with temperatures in the natural range. This increase parallels the rate of production of fecal pellets. Females without males can produce about 400 eggs before entering a generally short postreproductive period. Weight increments between copepodite stages are exponential and, assuming isochronal durations of stages and that development time of older stages is the same mutiple of embryonic duration at all temperatures, a temperature-dependent rate is estimated for pre-adult growth. We demonstrate that this growth rate also predicts the observed maximal rate of egg production by the nongrowing adult females. Published data for other copepod species (except Pseudocalanus) are inadequate for wider testing of this hypothesis, but available data do suggest that no such simple rule governs total output of eggs by females of different species.