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Allometric scaling of mortality rates with body mass in abalones

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Abstract

The existence of an allometric relationship between mortality rates and body mass has been theorized and extensively documented across taxa. Within species, however, the allometry between mortality rates and body mass has received substantially less attention and the consistency of such scaling patterns at the intra-specific level is controversial. We reviewed 73 experimental studies to examine the relationship between mortality rates and body size among seven species of abalone (Haliotis spp.), a marine herbivorous mollusk. Both in the field and in the laboratory, log-transformed mortality rates were negatively correlated with log-transformed individual body mass for all species considered, with allometric exponents remarkably similar among species. This regular pattern confirms previous findings that juvenile abalones suffer higher mortality rates than adult individuals. Field mortality rates were higher overall than those measured in the laboratory, and the relationship between mortality and body mass tended to be steeper in field than in laboratory conditions for all species considered. These results suggest that in the natural environment, additional mortality factors, especially linked to predation, could significantly contribute to mortality, particularly at small body sizes. On the other hand, the consistent allometry of mortality rates versus body mass in laboratory conditions suggests that other sources of mortality, beside predation, are size-dependent in abalone.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Stefano Leonardi, Luca Bolzoni and Simone Vincenzi for helpful comments on statistical analysis and presentation of results and Marc Mangel and Ashley Greenley for editorial advice. We are also grateful to three anonymous referees for useful comments on the manuscript draft. This work was supported through funds from the Walton Family Foundation and from the Italian Ministry of Research (PRIN project 2008 and Interlink project # II04CE49G8).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Università degli Studi di Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze 33A, 43100, Parma, Italy

    Marisa Rossetto, Giulio A. De Leo & Daniele Bevacqua

  2. Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, CA, 93950, USA

    Giulio A. De Leo & Fiorenza Micheli

Authors
  1. Marisa Rossetto
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  2. Giulio A. De Leo
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  3. Daniele Bevacqua
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  4. Fiorenza Micheli
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Correspondence to Marisa Rossetto.

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Communicated by Marc Mangel.

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Rossetto, M., De Leo, G.A., Bevacqua, D. et al. Allometric scaling of mortality rates with body mass in abalones. Oecologia 168, 989–996 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-011-2163-1

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