A new article by an international research team explores the non-consumptive effects of predators in a coastal copepod.
J Heuschele, S Ceballos, CM Andersen Borg, O Bjærke, S Isari, R Lasley-Rasher, E Lindehoff, A Souissi, S Souissi, J Titelman (2014) Non-consumptive effects of predator presence on copepod reproduction: insights from a mesocosm experiment. Marine Biology. (DOI) 10.1007/s00227-014-2449-z
Using a mesocosm approach we investigated the reproductive dynamics of the estuarine copepod Eurytemora affinis in the presence and absence of its predator the mysid Neomysis integer. The work was conducted at the Umea Marine Sciences Center and generously supported by an MESOAQUA grant.
Our combined results suggest the presence of predators causes a shift from ovigerous to non-ovigerous females by either actively delayed egg production or by shedding of egg sacs. We also saw that nauplii production was initially suppressed in the predation treatment, but increased towards the end of the experiment. While the proportion of fertilized females was similar in both treatments, it constantly fell behind model predictions based on a model that assumes a random mating pattern. Our results highlight the importance of non-consumptive effects of predators on copepod reproduction and hence on population dynamics.
Read the paper here at Marine Biology.