The development of Ophiothrix fragilis was documented using light microscopy, and the allometry of larval growth was quantified. Larval development to the suspended juvenile stage took 21 days under conditions that were probably optimal compared to those in the plankton. Larval shape changed through development as the larval body and arms grew. Growth of the posterolateral larval arms was conti...

Low food availability is a major structuring force in deep-sea benthic communities, sustaining only very low densities of organisms in parts of the abyss. These low population densities may result in an Allee effect, whereby local reproductive success is inhibited, and populations are maintained by larval dispersal from bathyal slopes. This slope-abyss source-sink (SASS) hypothesis suggests tha...

Offspring size is thought to strongly affect offspring fitness and many studies have shown strong offspring size/fitness relationships in marine and terrestrial organisms. This relationship is strongly mitigated by local environmental conditions and the optimal offspring size that mothers should produce will vary among different environments. It is assumed that offspring size will consistently ...

Information on the spatial relationships between disease vectors and environmental factors is fundamental to vector-borne disease control. Although it is well known that mosquito abundance is associated with the amount of rainfall and thus the number of larval breeding sites, the spatial relationship between larval habitat availability and adult mosquito abundance is not clear. We investigated ...

The evolution of population dynamics in a stochastic environment is analysed under a general form of density-dependence with genetic variation in r and K, the intrinsic rate of increase and carrying capacity in the average environment, and in sigma(e)(2), the environmental variance of population growth rate. The continuous-time model assumes a large population size and a stationary distribution...

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...

Marine reserves are an increasingly important tool for the management of marine ecosystems around the world. However, the effects of proposed marine reserve configurations on sustainability and yield of populations are typically not estimated because of the computational intensity of direct simulation and uncertainty in larval dispersal and density-dependent recruitment. Here we develop a metho...