Development, growth, and egg production of Centropages abdominalis in the eastern subarctic Pacific

• Published in: Journal of Plankton Research
• Main Authors: Slater, L. M., Hopcroft, R. R.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 2004
• Subjects: Article; Pacific; Subarctic
• Online Access: http://plankt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/fbh152v1; https://doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbh152

Centropages abdominalis is a neritic, omnivorous, temporally abundant copepod present throughout the subarctic Pacific and its marginal seas. The two main objectives of this study were to determine how temperature influences the development of C. abdominalis and whether growth rates of in situ populations may be limited by available food. At 6.9°C median development time from eggs laid to 50% adults was 42 days and the average weight-specific somatic growth rate was 0.17 d-1. At 4.6°C median development time to adult was 59 days (projected) and growth rate averaged 0.08 d-1, suggesting that 4.6°C may be approaching the lower temperature for development and growth in this species. The functional relationship between development time and temperature was established over the temperature range that this species occurs. The in situ adult growth rates between 10 and 13°C averaged 0.14 d-1, and were generally lower than the laboratory-reared juvenile growth rates, which may indicate that adult C. abdominalis are food limited in the field during summer and autumn.