Review of factors contributing to the settlement and recruitment of barnacles
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Date
2007-03
Authors
Trainer, James
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Abstract
Barnacles are popular study organisms for a variety of reasons. As adults, they are sessile, and they are often small and numerous, making them easy to manipulate in ecological experiments. A researcher can be sure that an adult barnacle that disappears between observations has died, and has not moved away. As larvae, they develop through a series of six naupliar instars in the plankton. Nauplii are easy to identify in plankton samples, and are easy to collect from the egg lamellae of adult barnacles and culture in the laboratory. Nauplii metamorphose into the non-feeding cyprid stage, at which point they attempt to contact and stick to hard substrata. Depending on condition of the substrate, cyprids metamorphose into juvenile barnacles or return to the water column. A juvenile barnacle feeds and grows at its site of metamorphosis until it dies.
Description
33 pages
Keywords
Marine Biology, Marine Ecology, Barnacles