Effects of crude oil on survival and development in embryonated eggs in Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896 (Decapoda, Portunidae)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Developmental Biology, Marine Biology, Toxicology, Ecotoxicology, Environmental Impacts
- Keywords
- Blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, Deepwater Horizon, Oil spill, Blue crab development, Invertebrate embryos, Oil exposure, Prezoea
- Copyright
- © 2018 Kelly et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Effects of crude oil on survival and development in embryonated eggs in Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896 (Decapoda, Portunidae) PeerJ Preprints 6:e26750v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26750v1
Abstract
Blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1896, are ubiquitous along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. These organisms play an integral role in the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), where not only are they a keystone species, but are also socioeconomically important. The survival of embryonated eggs is necessary to ensure adequate recruitment into the next generation. Because the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH) occurred during the peak of the blue crab spawning season, the incident likely impacted blue crab embryos. In order to assess the effect of oil on embryonic growth and development, we collected embryonated eggs from seven different female blue crabs from the GOM throughout the spawning season and exposed them to an oil concentration of 500 ppb (the approximate concentration of oil at the surface water near the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig). Exposure to oil at this concentration caused a significantly larger proportion of prezoeae versus zoeae to hatch from embryonated eggs in experiments lasting longer than 4 days. Exposure to oil did not significantly affect overall survival or development rate. The prezoeal stage is a little-studied stage of blue crab development. Though it may or may not be a normal stage of development, this stage has been found to occur in suboptimal conditions and has lower survival than zoeal stages. The larger proportion of prezoeae following prolonged exposure to oil thus indicates that crude oil at concentrations likely to be experienced by crabs after the DWH spill negatively impacted the development of blue crab embryos. In addition to providing insight into the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, this study sheds light on embryonic development in blue crabs, a critical, but poorly investigated phase of this important species’ life cycle.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Data for each embryonated egg evaluated for each of the 7 replicates
Data for each embryonated egg evaluated for each of the 7 replicates for each day of the experiment. Metadata tab provides explaination for each column used in the dataset.