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Thermal characteristics of early life stages of Laminaria farlowii, a deep-water kelp from Southern and Central California

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Abstract

Laminaria farlowii, golden kombu, is of interest as a novel species for aquaculture in Southern California, USA. Thermal biology and climate change resilience are important to the species' usefulness as a crop for the future. Wild populations of L. farlowii live primarily below the seasonal thermocline but individuals have been successfully cultivated in near surface conditions of light intensity and temperature. We examined the thermal biology of female gametophytes and juvenile sporophytes of L. farlowii. We grew the female gametophytes and juvenile sporophytes across gradients of temperature (9–20 °C) and light intensity (20–80 µmol photons m−2.s−1), finding growth rates were saturated by all light intensities tested and sensitive to temperature. Optimal growth temperatures were 16 °C for the female gametophytes and 15 °C for juvenile sporophytes. In a separate experiment, larger adult sporophytes were exposed to thermal regimes differing in mean temperature (10–20 °C) and thermal variability, under a photoperiod chosen to induce sorus formation. Growth rates were not significantly different from 14–18 °C but sori were formed only at a mean temperature of 15 °C. These results indicate that nursery and cultivation methods developed for a similar kelp, Saccharina latissima, are suitable for L. farlowii, and that the species can grow in the predominant coastal temperatures of Southern California.

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Data availability

On publication, data files will be available through CSUN Scholarworks, an open data repository. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are also available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by California Sea Grant #R/AQ-148,NA18OAR417 to J.E. Kubler, S. Augyte and D. Bush

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ocean Era Inc., Kailua-Kona, HI, USA

    Simona Augyte

  2. Department of Biology, California State University, Northridge, CA, USA

    Steven R. Dudgeon & Janet E. Kübler

  3. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Stamford, CT, USA

    Charles Yarish, Michael Marty-Rivera, Crystal A. Ng & Janet E. Kübler

  4. Life Science Department, Los Angeles Pierce College, Woodland Hills, CA, USA

    Crystal A. Ng

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  1. Simona Augyte
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  2. Steven R. Dudgeon
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  4. Michael Marty-Rivera
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  5. Crystal A. Ng
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  6. Janet E. Kübler
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Contributions

SA, JK – conceptualization, funding acquisition, writing – original draft of the manuscript.

SD, JK – data analysis.

CY, MMR, CN, SD – writing, review and editing of the manuscript.

MMR, CN, JK – data collection.

CY- supervision of research, PI UConn.

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Correspondence to Simona Augyte or Janet E. Kübler.

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Augyte, S., Dudgeon, S.R., Yarish, C. et al. Thermal characteristics of early life stages of Laminaria farlowii, a deep-water kelp from Southern and Central California. J Appl Phycol 35, 2543–2553 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-023-03064-2

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