Larval supply is a limited determinant of settlement at mesoscales across an anthropogenic seascape
- PDF / 801,076 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 31 Downloads / 177 Views
(0123456789().,-volV) ( 01234567 89().,-volV)
PRIMARY RESEARCH PAPER
Larval supply is a limited determinant of settlement at mesoscales across an anthropogenic seascape Kevin C. K. Ma
. Christopher W. McKindsey . Ladd E. Johnson
Received: 11 February 2020 / Revised: 9 August 2020 / Accepted: 19 August 2020 Ó Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The relationship between larval supply and settlement is an integral part of the demographic processes of benthic marine organisms that determine their distribution at subsequent life stages. In ascidians, a strong positive relationship between larval supply and settlement has been previously documented, but only at small spatial scales (one location) and short time scales (less than one day). We investigated how this relationship might scale up by sampling larval abundance and settlement of a colonial ascidian (Botryllus schlosseri) across mesoscales
Handling editor: Iacopo Bertocci
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04391-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
(100 s of m) of the anthropogenic seascape of a 1.5-ha marina. Settlement varied vertically with a linear decrease in settlement with increasing depth. This pattern corresponded to the vertical distribution of larvae in the morning, when they were most abundant. However, larval abundance explained only 26% of the variation in settlement at the meso-spatial scale (i.e. the combined effect of the horizontal and vertical dimensions). This weakening of the relationship between larval supply and settlement suggests that the two processes may become decoupled at larger spatial and temporal scales. Our study underscores how changing the scales of sampling may affect our understanding of larval dispersal and settlement processes. Keywords Zooplankton Recruitment Point sampling Passive sampling Vertical distribution Horizontal distribution Diurnal patterns
K. C. K. Ma L. E. Johnson Que´bec-Oce´an, De´partement de biologie, Universite´ Laval, Que´bec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada e-mail: [email protected]
Introduction K. C. K. Ma (&) Department of Zoology and Entomology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown 6139, Eastern Cape, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] C. W. McKindsey Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Institut Maurice-Lamontagne, Mont-Joli, QC G5H 3Z4, Canada e-mail: [email protected]
Larval dispersal and settlement are key demographic processes for benthic marine organisms. For benthic invertebrates with biphasic life cycles (i.e. involving the dispersal of larval stages in the water column), recruitment of new individuals to the benthic adult population depends fundamentally on larval supply.
123
Hydrobiologia
However, until the 1980s, few studies had evaluated the processes and influence of the distribution and abundance of planktonic larvae on the dynamics of adult populations, i.e. supply-side ecology (Connell, 1985; Lewin, 1986; Roughgarden et al., 1987; but see Young, 1
Data Loading...
