Abstract

We measured ingestion rate (IR), egg production rate (EPR) and egg hatching success (EHS) at increasing prey concentrations and calculated egg production efficiency (EPE) and maintenance rate (MR) in the estuarine copepod Acartia tonsa fed three different algal diets. EPR and EHS were relatively more affected by prey species than by prey concentration. EPEs were constant among carbon concentrations (C) on a diet of Rhodomonas baltica (0.202 +/- 0.055, mean +/- SD) and Dunaliella tertiolecta (0.034 +/- 0.015), but decreased significantly from 0.371 +/- 0.062 (mean of two lowest prey concentrations) to 0.200 +/- 0.019 at the highest concentration of Thalassiosira weissflogii. In general it seems that other requirements than C demand limit EPE and EHS in A. tonsa. The MR (IR when EPR = 0) was significantly higher on D. tertiolecta, which also yielded the lowest EPEs, and it seems that variations in maintenance requirements may have been instrumental in evoking EPE variations as well.

Published in

Crustaceana
2015, Volume: 88, number: 6, pages: 675-687
Publisher: BRILL ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685403-00003436

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/120109