Abstract
The environments in which offspring are reared can profoundly affect their development, growth, and survival. Certain specialized fish species deposit and sometimes care for their young in one of the Earth’s most dynamic ecosystems: the marine intertidal zone. This tendency to deposit eggs in intertidal habitats rather than more stable coastal waters suggests intertidal conditions confer benefits to offspring that outweigh the risks parents face when spawning at the ocean’s edge. Depositing eggs in the warmer intertidal zone might allow fish to produce and hatch larger eggs than would be possible in cooler subtidal waters, where development rates are much slower. We used two laboratory experiments and a field experiment to investigate how the benefits of intertidal development could vary according to egg size in the plainfin midshipman toadfish, Porichthys notatus. These toadfish breed along an intertidal gradient and down into shallow subtidal waters. We found that larger toadfish mothers produced larger eggs that hatched into larger young. Mothers laying these larger eggs also deposited them in warmer nests at higher tidal elevations, where the eggs can hatch into the largest juveniles with the highest survival rates. Juveniles that were raised in warm water in the laboratory (mimicking conditions in the high intertidal zone) experienced the highest survival rates during development and were also bolder and exhibited faster swimming speeds when fleeing a simulated predator. Taken together, these results suggest variation in propagule size can support divergent nest site choices among females, with females producing larger eggs benefiting more from depositing their eggs in warmer areas. Individual variation in propagule size could thus support niche partitioning by expanding the range of suitable conditions for nesting sites.
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Acknowledgements
We thank E. Carr and the Lindsay Family, the Balshine family, C. and S. Flader, P. Walker, R. Shepard, and Capt. B. Cogswell as well as Mr. Warren Johnny and the Stz'uminus First Nation, the Snaw-naw-as First Nation, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada for permitting us to access the field sites and facilitating our research activities. A. Bose, J. Miller, and B. Bolker provided insightful feedback on the study design and analyses. M. Martin, M. Gordon, and K. Cable along with laboratory animal technicians at the University of Victoria’s Outdoor Aquatic Unit were instrumental in housing and rearing the experimental animals. We thank N. Houpt, H. Davies, L. Agagnier, M. Woods, J. Curtis, D. Paterson, and K. Innes for their assistance during experimentation, and S. Dhanota, M. Siddiqui, S. Matthew, A-L. Nguyen, and A. Pathak for assisting in data collection. We also thank S. Hamilton and two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback that greatly improved the paper.
Funding
This work was funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery and Accelerator grants to SB and FJ, a Liber Ero Foundation grant to FJ, and Animal Behaviour Society, American Museum of Natural History, Sigma Xi Foundation grants to NB. Additional funding was provided to NB from the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.
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NAWB, SB, and FJ: conceived the project. All authors designed the methodologies. NAWB, SB, and HS: conducted field and lab work. HS: conducted video analysis. NAWB: conducted all statistical analyses. NAWB and SB: wrote the first manuscript draft. All authors contributed to subsequent drafts and approved the final version.
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Collection and animal housing procedures employed in our experiments were reviewed and approved by the McMaster University Research Ethics Committee (AUP: 18-01-02) and the University of Victoria Animal Care Committee (AUP: Juanes-2017–003), in accordance with guidelines set forth by the Canadian Council on Animal Care (Olfert et al. 1993). Our practices were subject to regular review by the University of Victoria Animal Care Committee during experimentation.
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Brown, N.A.W., Shafer, H., Juanes, F. et al. Benefits of intertidal development and large egg size in a marine toadfish. Mar Biol 170, 100 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-023-04246-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-023-04246-9