Ampelisca eschrichtii Krøyer, 1842 (Ampeliscidae) of the Sakhalin Shelf in the Okhotsk Sea starve in summer and feast in winter
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Conservation Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology, Zoology, Histology
- Keywords
- Gray whale, Ampelisca, trophic dynamics, adaptation, Sakhalin Island, reproduction, production, histology, ecology, starvation
- Copyright
- © 2018 Durkina 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. Ampelisca eschrichtii Krøyer, 1842 (Ampeliscidae) of the Sakhalin Shelf in the Okhotsk Sea starve in summer and feast in winter. PeerJ Preprints 6:e3496v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3496v2
Abstract
Ampelisca eschrichtii Krøyer, 1842 of the Sakhalin Shelf of the Okhotsk Sea, Far Eastern Russia, comprise the highest known biomass concentration of any amphipod population in the world and are a critically important prey source for western gray whales. The high prevalence of atrophied ovaries, undersized and damaged oocytes, undersized broods of embryos and the absence of terminal phase males or females brooding fully formed juveniles among these populations in late spring and early fall are consistent with trophic stress and starvation. A. eschrichtii therefore appear to starve in summer and grow and reproduce in late fall and winter. In summer, these populations, occur below water strata containing the bulk of phytoplankton biomass and appear more likely to receive their trophic sources with vertical mixing that occurs in winter.
Author Comment
The manuscript exposition is reorganized for clarity. Changes in supporting data, analyses and conclusions were unnecessary.
Supplemental Information
Supplemental Table S1
Abbreviations for figures 1 - 3 and 7.
Supplemental Table S2
Quartile proportions of vitellogenic oocyte (VO) diameters (maximum, upper quartile, mean, median, lower quartile and minimum) among F0, FII and FIV stage females.