Stage and Population Specific Lower Lethal Salinity in Acartia Tonsa Copepods
Crooker, Jessica Ruth
Crooker, Jessica Ruth
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Abstract
Copepods, small aquatic crustaceans, play an important role in marine food systems. Linking primary producers to larger consumers, their role in ecosystem health makes copepods a good model organism in which to investigate global change. Though typically associated with rising temperatures, global change has a wide variety of impacts. For marine ecosystems one major concern is increasing storms that lower the salinity of coastal areas. Additionally, adaptation to rising temperatures could lead to losses in plasticity, reducing the ability of copepods to respond to other stressors (such as salinity changes). This study looked at Acartia tonsa, coastal marine copepods that have a broad latitudinal distribution. The lower lethal salinity was assessed in copepods collected from three locations at different latitudes. These locations were Hurricane Island Maine, Long Island New York, and Punta Gorda Florida. Within these populations, the lower lethal salinity was assessed at major life stages: larval nauplii, juvenile copepodites, and adults. Research on the Maine species is ongoing, but analysis using ANOVA and the Tukey test revealed a marginal difference between the lower lethal salinity of the New York and Florida populations (p=0.05), a significant difference between nauplii and copepodites (p=0.03) and copepodites and adults (p
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1:00pm-3:00pm
Undergraduate
Undergraduate
Date
2020-01-01