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Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis

Understanding the ecological role of shelters is greatly hampered by the scarcity of long-term laboratory experiments on the trade-off between fitness benefits and costs. This lack probably leads to an underestimation of the negative and/or positive effects on behaviors and growth of marine inverteb...

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Autores principales: Chi, Xiaomei, Sun, Jiangnan, Yu, Yushi, Luo, Jia, Zhao, Bao, Han, Feng, Chang, Yaqing, Zhao, Chong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7179571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32341892
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8886
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author Chi, Xiaomei
Sun, Jiangnan
Yu, Yushi
Luo, Jia
Zhao, Bao
Han, Feng
Chang, Yaqing
Zhao, Chong
author_facet Chi, Xiaomei
Sun, Jiangnan
Yu, Yushi
Luo, Jia
Zhao, Bao
Han, Feng
Chang, Yaqing
Zhao, Chong
author_sort Chi, Xiaomei
collection PubMed
description Understanding the ecological role of shelters is greatly hampered by the scarcity of long-term laboratory experiments on the trade-off between fitness benefits and costs. This lack probably leads to an underestimation of the negative and/or positive effects on behaviors and growth of marine invertebrates in benthic ecosystems. Although our previous study revealed a significant effect on fitness-related traits of Glyptocidaris crenularis after 31 months, the present study extended it and investigated fitness benefits and/or costs of long-term sheltering on sea urchins to over 7 years. The present long-term study suggests that the previously reported reduction in feeding rate probably resulted from a reduction in reflexive feeding motions (Aristotle’s lantern reflex) rather than changes in foraging behavior. Actively seeking sheltering behavior was negatively impacted in individuals with continuous access to shelters. However, covering and righting behaviors did not differ in sheltered sea urchins, indicating that these behaviors are maintained to escape from adverse environments regardless of shelter. Body size of sea urchins in the group with shelters was significantly lower than those without shelters after 7 years. Weights of gonads and gut were not significantly different after 7 years despite previous observations of differences after ~2.5 years. The present study provides valuable information on the trade-off between fitness benefits and costs to sea urchins residing in shelters. However, the present study is only a laboratory investigation for one urchin species (G. crenularis) which does not consider the complexity of natural environments. Field studies should be carried out with G. crenularis and other sea urchin species, before a more universal conclusion can be drawn.
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spelling pubmed-71795712020-04-27 Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis Chi, Xiaomei Sun, Jiangnan Yu, Yushi Luo, Jia Zhao, Bao Han, Feng Chang, Yaqing Zhao, Chong PeerJ Animal Behavior Understanding the ecological role of shelters is greatly hampered by the scarcity of long-term laboratory experiments on the trade-off between fitness benefits and costs. This lack probably leads to an underestimation of the negative and/or positive effects on behaviors and growth of marine invertebrates in benthic ecosystems. Although our previous study revealed a significant effect on fitness-related traits of Glyptocidaris crenularis after 31 months, the present study extended it and investigated fitness benefits and/or costs of long-term sheltering on sea urchins to over 7 years. The present long-term study suggests that the previously reported reduction in feeding rate probably resulted from a reduction in reflexive feeding motions (Aristotle’s lantern reflex) rather than changes in foraging behavior. Actively seeking sheltering behavior was negatively impacted in individuals with continuous access to shelters. However, covering and righting behaviors did not differ in sheltered sea urchins, indicating that these behaviors are maintained to escape from adverse environments regardless of shelter. Body size of sea urchins in the group with shelters was significantly lower than those without shelters after 7 years. Weights of gonads and gut were not significantly different after 7 years despite previous observations of differences after ~2.5 years. The present study provides valuable information on the trade-off between fitness benefits and costs to sea urchins residing in shelters. However, the present study is only a laboratory investigation for one urchin species (G. crenularis) which does not consider the complexity of natural environments. Field studies should be carried out with G. crenularis and other sea urchin species, before a more universal conclusion can be drawn. PeerJ Inc. 2020-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7179571/ /pubmed/32341892 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8886 Text en © 2020 Chi et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , 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) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Chi, Xiaomei
Sun, Jiangnan
Yu, Yushi
Luo, Jia
Zhao, Bao
Han, Feng
Chang, Yaqing
Zhao, Chong
Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis
title Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis
title_full Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis
title_fullStr Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis
title_full_unstemmed Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis
title_short Fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin Glyptocidaris crenularis
title_sort fitness benefits and costs of shelters to the sea urchin glyptocidaris crenularis
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7179571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32341892
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8886
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