Inter-litter competition and communal nursing among Norway rats: advantages of birth synchrony

Summary The effect of inter-litter competition on pup survival was investigated in pairs of female rats (Rattus norvegicus) living and breeding in the same environment. If a female gave birth when a 0- to 14-day-old litter was already present in the environment, her pups had a very high chance of surviving, similar to the situation in which no other litter was present. Moreover, the mother was likely to nurse communally with the mother of the 0- to 14-day-old litter. This communal nursing benefitted the newborn pups as evidenced by their being heavier at weaning than litters that were not nursed communally. In contrast, if a female gave birth when a 15-to 28-day-old litter was already present in the environment, her newborn pups were likely to die within 3 days postpartum, owing to the fact that they were often prevented from suckling at their mother's teats, resulting in milk deprivation, and were often beneath the older pups, resulting in physical trauma. These findings suggest that inter-litter competition is an important source of pup mortality when litters are born 15-28 days apart. The data are discussed in terms of the advantages of birth synchrony.     

The cause of size-assortative mating in the leaf beetle Trirhabda canadensis (Coleoptera : Chrysomelidae)

Summary Examples of positive assortative mating by body size are abundant but its causes remain controversial. I show that size-assortative mating occurs in the chrysomelid beetle Trirhabda canadensis and I test a series of alternative hypotheses to explain how this mating pattern comes about. Results suggest that assortative mating in this beetle is due to the greater ease with which size-matched pairs can achieve intromission, and not due to size-biased skews in the availability of mates or mate choice favoring large individuals. There was no correlation between male and female elytron length (a measure of body size) at the initiation of courtship, but pairs assorted positively by size at the onset of intromission. Moreover, in the laboratory, there was a negative correlation between male and female size for pairs engaged in courtship that terminated without mating. Assortative mating was not associated with a large-male mating advantage and there was no evidence of female choice of large males. Nor was there unequivocal evidence for male choice of large females; although mating females were slightly larger and considerably heavier than solitary females, males did not differ in the frequency with which they rejected large and small females. Assortative mating in T. canadensis appeared to be caused by the lower ability of mismatched pairs to achieve intromission after an encounter, both when males were larger and when they were smaller than the female.     

Newly metamorphosed <Emphasis Type="Italic">Elysia clarki</Emphasis> juveniles feed on and sequester chloroplasts from algal species different from those utilized by adult slugs

The adult, sacoglossan sea slug, Elysia clarki (Pierce et al. in Molluscan Res 26, 2006), sequesters functional chloroplasts in cells of the digestive diverticula from four species of macroalgae in the order Bryopsidales (Penicillus capitatus, Penicillus lamourouxii, Halimeda incrassata, and Halimeda monile). Feeding experiments were conducted in December, 2003, using individuals raised in the laboratory from egg masses laid by E. clarki adults which had been collected from Grassy Key, Florida, USA, and 29 species of macroalgae collected from the Florida Keys, Tampa Bay, Tarpon Springs, Florida, or Woods Hole, Massachusetts or obtained from the Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas. For the first 14-day post-metamorphosis, juveniles ate only the thin filamentous species, Bryopsis plumosa or Derbesia tenuissima. Transmission electron microscopy showed that the chloroplasts from both algae were sequestered intracellularly in juvenile slugs. Individuals offered any other macroalga, including the four species fed on by adults, did not feed on or incorporate any chloroplasts, and soon died. Juveniles switched from B. plumosa to P. capitatus at a length of ∼ 1.0 cm, and fixed for microscopy 14 days later had intact intracellular chloroplasts from both algae. Nucleotide sequences of the chloroplast gene, rbcL, from DNA extracted from E. clarki, collected from Vaca Key, Florida, were aligned with 22 other available macroalgal rbcL sequences indicating that these E. clarki adults had fed on three species of algae in the Bryopsidales including Bryopsis pennata, and TEM results partially confirmed this conclusion.     

The effect of salinity on survival,bioenergetics and predation risk in the mud crabs <Emphasis Type="Italic">Panopeus simpsoni</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Eurypanopeus depressus</Emphasis>

The effect of salinity on survival, bioenergetics and predation risk was studied in two common mud crabs in the Gulf of Mexico, Eurypanopeus depressus and Panopeus simpsoni. Eurypanopeus survived better at low salinities (the 28-day LC₅₀ of E. depressus was 0.19 PSU compared with 6.97 PSU for P. simpsoni). While low salinity increased energy expenditure and reduced food consumption and absorption, resulting in lower scope for growth, identical responses to salinity occurred in both species. Both species also had similar salinity-dependent patterns of hyper-osmoregulation. Because these physiological mechanisms could not explain differences between the two species in salinity tolerance, we explored the effect of salinity on competition for refugia. Eurypanopeus had higher resource holding potential for refugia, especially at low salinity. As a consequence it had lower predation risk to blue crabs in laboratory experiments. The higher tolerance by E. depressus for low salinities, and greater resource holding potential for refugia may explain why it has a more euryhaline distribution than P. simpsoni.     

Asynchronous deposition of dense skeletal bands in Porites lutea

Alternate dense and less-dense skeletal bands in massive corals have been used for many years to record the history of growth in species such as Porites lutea and Montastrea annularis, based on the assumption that one dense band and one less-dense band is equivalent to a year's growth. This report demonstrates that specimens of Porites lutea Edwards and Haime (collected from the same neighbourhood in Phuket, Thailand, from November 1983 through November 1984) produce skeletal bands asynchronously and that one year's growth in corals from certain sites may regularly consist of four bands of varying density. The annual banding pattern observed at all sites includes the deposition of a dense band in response to high sedimentation loads and, probably, reduced light levels.     

Stereophotography for the field biologist: measurement of lengths and three-dimensional positions of free-swimming sharks

A stereophotographic technique for determining size and relative position of free-swimming sharks is described and illustrated for schooling scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini). The method yields total length and nearest-neighbor, interindividual distance; and each of these dimensions is expressed as a function of the shark's distance into a school on the vertical and horizontal planes. Stereopairs of photographs were taken by an aligned, beam-mounted pair of cameras (Nikonos III). The scale to determine the length of a shark from the paired photographic images was obtained from the horizontal displacement between the images. Displacement was correlated with optical axis separation from photographs of a scaled staff at known distances from the camera. Image dimensions on the photographs were measured by projecting a scale onto the stage through a camera lucida. The precision of repeated measurements of a 50 cm section of a scaled staff at increasing distances from the cameras of 2, 4, and 8 m was ±5.0%. Lengths of the sharks ranged from 109 to 371 cm, with a median of 178 cm, for 3 offshore sites in the Gulf of California during July and August 1979. At one site, El Bajo Gorda, lengths increased with both distance from the camera and distance into the group; in contrast, the interindividual distances (head-to-head) did not vary with distance into the group and possessed a median of 232 cm.     

Natural variations in tissue concentration of copper,zinc and iron in the polychaete Nereis diversicolor

This study was undertaken to investigate the natural variation of heavy metals in the polychaete Nereis diversicolor O. F. Müller and to examine this variation with respect to physiological and environmental parameters. During a 2 yr period from October 1980 to October 1982, concentrations of copper, zinc and iron in N. diversicolor from the Tees Estuary, North East England, were found to vary significantly with time. A seasonal influence on whole body copper concentration, in part related to the reproductive cycle, was observed. Zinc concentrations in N. diversicolor increased during periods of rapid growth and may represent a physiological demand for this metal. Whole body concentrations of iron appeared to be independent of size of worm, sexual maturation and sediment concentrations.     

Oxygen consumption of pelagic juveniles and demersal adults of the deep-sea fish Sebastolobus altivelis,measured at depth

Oxygen consumption rates of the deep-sea fish Sebastolobus altivelis were measured in situ on pelagic juveniles at mesopelagic depths (608 m) and on demersal adults at bathyal depths (1 300 m) in the Santa Catalina Basin in March 1982. Two pelagic juveniles were individually collected, and respiration was measured continuously for approximately 2 d with a slurp gun respirometer manipulated from the submersible “Alvin”. Oxygen consumption rates of these juveniles were highly variable and were 1.5 to 1.8 times higher during the night than during the day. Gut contents of the juveniles were mainly euphausiids (Euphausia pacifica and Nematoscelis difficilis). Four demersal adults were collected by “Alvin” and individually placed in fish-trap respirometers on the bottom where respiration was measured continuously for approximately 1 d. Weight-specific O₂ consumption rates for adults decreased with increasing body weight and were consistent in magnitude throughout the incubation period. Population O₂ consumption for demersal S. altivelis (calculated from abundance, size-frequency distribution, and O₂ consumption regression equation) was 11.01 μl O₂ m^-2 h^-1, which is two orders of magnitude less than the O₂ consumption rate for the population of the most abundant epibenthic megafaunal species in the Santa Catalina Basin, the ophiuroid Ophiophthalmus normani. O. normani is a principal prey for adults of S. altivelis based on gutcontent analysis. Given the population O₂ consumption rate as an estimate of food energy demand, the demersal population of S. altivelis would assimilate only 0.007% of the standing crop of O. normani per day.     

Inorganic nitrogen metabolism in marine bacteria: The intracellular free amino acid pools of a marine pseudomonad

The marine pseudomonad bacterium PL₁ contains an intracellular pool of free amino acids which consist mainly of glutamate with small amounts of glutamine and aspartate when grown in a nutrient medium containing 0.2 M NaCl. When the NaCl concentration of the growth medium is increased to 0.8 M, proline becomes a major component of the intracellular pool together with glutamate—at this molarity and under suitable nutrient conditions these amino acids comprise 20% of total bacterial amino acid nitrogen. When grown in a nutrient growth medium containing a constant level of NaCl, the intracellular pool size can vary by a factor of 4 depending on the concentration of carbon and nitrogen in the medium. Experiments show that the amino acid pool can act as a nitrogen reserve but has little function as a carbon reserve. At high NaCl concentrations there is a marked dependence for growth on the presence of sufficient potassium in the medium. However, no correlation between K⁺ and glutamate concentration in either nitrogen or K⁺-limited cultures has been found. None of the enzymes associated with glutamate biosynthesis was influenced by NaCl levels between 0.2 and 0.5 M. Neither Na⁺ or K⁺ stimulated the activity of these enzymes when tested in vitro.