Scholarlink

<p>Female Caribbean spiny lobsters, <i>Panulirus argus</i>, perform active parental care behaviors when brooding embryos underneath their abdomen to aid with oxygen supplementation and to prevent excessive fouling. Active parental care behaviors may secondarily be adapted by this host for a new purpose:&#xa0;behavioral mitigation that limits infestation of the nemertean egg predator, <i>Carcinonemertes conanobrieni</i>. We evaluated whether parental care is used as an explicit mode of mitigation during <i>C. conanobrieni</i> infestations, across all embryo development stages, and manipulated these hosts to test if they can sense and react to the presence of nemerteans in their brood mass. For this study, we collected egg-bearing Caribbean spiny lobsters from June - July 2023 across the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary reef tract (USA). <i>Carcinonemertes conanobrieni</i> prevalence was 100% and out of 77 collected lobsters, 53 females were defined as having low <i>C. conanobrieni</i> infestation loads while 24 were classified by high infestation intensities in their brood masses. Behavioral assays showed that there were no differences in the frequencies of grooming between lobsters with low versus high nemertean loads. Our manipulative experiment that injected female brood masses with seawater from a container holding live <i>C. conanobrieni</i> did not show the ability of <i>P. argus</i> to sense <i>C. conanobrieni</i>, as females did not respond by significantly altering the frequency in which they groomed. The results from this study support continued investigation into the ability of these females to combat nemertean infestation during brooding, especially given the negative effects of <i>C. conanobrieni</i> on reproductive performance.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Investigating active parental care in egg-bearing Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus with varying nemertean egg predator Carcinonemertes conanobrieni intensities

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年9月2日

查看全文
  • Natalie C. Stephens,
  • Donald C. Behringer,
  • Rose Porter,
  • Alyssa M. Baker,
  • J. Antonio Baeza

摘要

Female Caribbean spiny lobsters, Panulirus argus, perform active parental care behaviors when brooding embryos underneath their abdomen to aid with oxygen supplementation and to prevent excessive fouling. Active parental care behaviors may secondarily be adapted by this host for a new purpose: behavioral mitigation that limits infestation of the nemertean egg predator, Carcinonemertes conanobrieni. We evaluated whether parental care is used as an explicit mode of mitigation during C. conanobrieni infestations, across all embryo development stages, and manipulated these hosts to test if they can sense and react to the presence of nemerteans in their brood mass. For this study, we collected egg-bearing Caribbean spiny lobsters from June - July 2023 across the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary reef tract (USA). Carcinonemertes conanobrieni prevalence was 100% and out of 77 collected lobsters, 53 females were defined as having low C. conanobrieni infestation loads while 24 were classified by high infestation intensities in their brood masses. Behavioral assays showed that there were no differences in the frequencies of grooming between lobsters with low versus high nemertean loads. Our manipulative experiment that injected female brood masses with seawater from a container holding live C. conanobrieni did not show the ability of P. argus to sense C. conanobrieni, as females did not respond by significantly altering the frequency in which they groomed. The results from this study support continued investigation into the ability of these females to combat nemertean infestation during brooding, especially given the negative effects of C. conanobrieni on reproductive performance.