| Summary: | Extant deep-sea invertebrate fauna represent both ancient and recent invasions from shallow-water habitats. Hydrostatic pressure may present a significant physiological challenge to organisms seeking to colonize deeper waters or migrate ontogenetically. Pressure may be a key factor contributing to bottlenecks in the radiation of taxa and potentially drive speciation. Here, we assess shifts in the tolerance of hydrostatic pressure through early ontogeny of the northern stone crab Lithodes maja, which occupies a depth range of 4–790 m in the North Atlantic. The zoea I, megalopa and crab I stages were exposed to hydrostatic pressures up to 30.0 MPa (equivalent of 3000 m depth), and the relative fold change of genes putatively coding for the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor-regulated protein 1 (narg gene), two heat-shock protein 70 kDa (HSP70) isoforms and mitochondrial Citrate Synthase (CS gene) were measured. This study finds a significant increase in the relative expression of the CS and hsp70a genes with increased hydrostatic pressure in the zoea I stage, and an increase in the relative expression of all genes with increased hydrostatic pressure in the megalopa and crab I stages. Transcriptional responses are corroborated by patterns in respiratory rates in response to hydrostatic pressure in all stages. These results suggest a decrease in the acute high-pressure tolerance limit as ontogeny advances, as reflected by a shift in the hydrostatic pressure at which significant differences are observed. Narg FASTA files for alignment FASTA format files used to derive the narg gene alignment Narg_FASTA_files_for_alignment.txt ClustalO narg alignment Clustal Omega alignment file for the narg gene clustalo_narg_alignment.clustal Rpl8 FASTA files for alignment FASTA files used to derive the rpl8 alignment Rpl8_FASTA_files_for_alignment.txt ClustalO rpl8 alignment Clustal Omega download file for rpl8 alignment clustalo_rpl8_alignment.clustal Tubulin FASTA files for alignment FASTA files used to derives Tubulin gene ...
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