Variable within-brood maternal provisioning in newly extruded embryos of Homarus gammarus
- PDF / 686,441 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 84 Downloads / 159 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Variable within-brood maternal provisioning in newly extruded embryos of Homarus gammarus Miguel Costa Leal • Patricia N. Pochelon Teresa Lopes da Silva • Alberto Reis • Rui Rosa • Ricardo Calado
•
Received: 28 August 2012 / Accepted: 14 November 2012 / Published online: 29 November 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Abstract Offspring quality of decapod crustaceans has been widely studied, with special emphasis on the sources of variability determining embryonic and larval quality. Nevertheless, maternal provisioning has commonly been overlooked as a potential source of offspring within-brood variability. In the present study, the existence of variable maternal provisioning was assessed through the analysis of the fatty acid (FA) profile of newly extruded embryos from different regions of the brooding chamber of Homarus gammarus. Significant differences in the FA profile of embryos sampled from different pleopods and sides of the brooding chamber were recorded. Significant deviations of
the overall mean of each surveyed female were also observed for essential FA, particularly 20:4n-6, 20:5n-3 and 22:6n-3. Lipid energy available to fuel embryogenesis also varied among embryos sampled from different regions of the brooding chamber. Results suggest variable female investment at oocyte production, which may be amplified during the incubation period of developing embryos by differential lipid catabolism. For the first time, maternal provisioning is evidenced as an additional source for within-brood variability in the FA profile of embryos.
Introduction Communicated by X. Irigoyen.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00227-012-2131-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. C. Leal (&) P. N. Pochelon R. Calado Departamento de Biologia & CESAM, Universidade de Aveiro, Campus Universita´rio de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] R. Calado e-mail: [email protected] M. C. Leal Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, 10 Ocean Science Circle, 31411 Savannah, GA, USA T. L. da Silva A. Reis Unidade de Bioenergia, Laborato´rio Nacional de Engenharia e Geologia, LNEG I.P., Estrada do Pac¸o do Lumiar, 22, Edifı´cio F R/C, 1649-038 Lisbon, Portugal R. Rosa Laborato´rio Marı´timo da Guia, Centro de Oceanografia, Faculdade de Cieˆncias da Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Nossa Senhora do Cabo, 939, 2750-374 Cascais, Portugal
The biochemical composition of marine decapod crustaceans during their embryonic development has been thoroughly investigated in the past (e.g. Morais et al. 2002; Rosa et al. 2003; Calado et al. 2005; Rosa et al. 2005, 2007). Its study has been crucial to understand reproductive effort and population ecology, namely for species targeted by commercial fisheries. While it is out of the scope of the present work to provide an extensive overview of the reproductive process in decapod crustaceans, it can be summarized as follows: (1) the reproductive proce
Data Loading...
