Body size varies considerably among species and among populations within species, exhibiting many repeatable patterns. However, which sources of selection generate geographic patterns, and which components of fitness mediate evolution of body size, are not well understood. For many animals, resource quality and intraspecific competition may mediate selection on body size producing large-scale g...

—Stock–recruit models typically use only spawning stock size as a predictor of recruitment to a fishery. In this paper, however, we used spawning stock size as well as larval density and key environmental variables to predict recruitment of white crappies Pomoxis annularis and black crappies P. nigromaculatus, a genus notorious for variable recruitment. We sampled adults and recruits from 11 Oh...

Population growth involves demographic bottlenecks that regulate recruitment success during various early life-history stages. The success of each early life-history stage can vary in response to population density, interacting with intrinsic (e.g. behavioural) and environmental (e.g. competition, predation) factors. Here, we used the common reef-building coral Acropora millepora to investigate...

The objectives of the present study were to determine if spatial differences existed between zooplankton, larval yellow perch Perca flavescens and bluegill Lepomis macrochirus (<13 mm total length, L(T)) in Pelican Lake (332 ha), NE, U.S.A. It was hypothesized that wind could act as a transport mechanism for larval fishes in this shallow lake, because strong winds are common at this geographic ...

To evaluate the influence of larval density in development of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes we evaluated three different densities. It was observed that conditions of high larval density and shortage of food produced a reduction in the size of adults and increased mortality rate of Aedes aegypti in laboratory conditions.

We used literature data to compare the relative influences of body size, water temperature, food density and experimental method on laboratory derived estimates of the ingestion rates of marine fish larvae. We subsequently used these results to evaluate whether larval feeding rates in nature are likely to be food-limited. Larval dry weight, temperature and food density explained 85 % of the var...

Availability of food is often a limiting factor in nature. Periods of food abundance are followed by times of famine, often in unpredictable patterns. Reliable information about the environment is a critical ingredient of successful survival strategy. One way to improve accuracy is to integrate information communicated by other organisms. To test whether such exchange of information may play a ...

To compare the reproductive performance of the wild and cultured stocks of beluga, Huso huso males, some spermatological parameters were measured including: sperm motility, sperm density, spermatocrit and also fertilization rate, hatching rate and larval growth and survival rates. The semen samples were sampled from 11 wild spawners and 12 cultured brooders. A half of each semen sample was allo...

Larvae which demonstrated long trails covering a large area while feeding (rover foragers) pupated significantly higher than those covering a relatively small area and exhibiting short paths (sitter foragers). Pupation height and density of larvae per vial were positively correlated. Under the condition o f equal larval density per vial, rovers were found to pupate significantly higher than sit...

The genetic architecture of variation in adult life span was examined for a population of recombinant inbred lines, each of which had been crossed to both inbred parental strains from which the lines were derived, after emergence from both high and low larval density. QTL affecting life span were mapped within each sex and larval density treatment by linkage to highly polymorphic roo-transposab...