Does the nutritional state of jellyfish vary with season along the Pacific Northwest Coast?
| dc.contributor.author | Li, Ya Lin | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-09-20T23:55:54Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2021-09-20T23:55:54Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-06 | |
| dc.description | 27 pages | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Cnidarian jellyfish are ubiquitous predators of pelagic communities, but little is known about their phenology and how food availability affects their nutritional status. Starved medusae tend to decrease somatic growth to allocate resources towards gonad development, thus a ratio of gonad to bell size might help determine the nutritional state of hydromedusae. We hypothesized that when food is scarce, C. gregaria and E. indicans will have larger gonads relative to their body size. I conducted starvation experiments to directly test how bell diameter and gonad area vary with food availability. The same two species of hydromedusae were also collected in a period of low primary productivity (winter) and high primary productivity (summer) along the North California Current System. ImageJ was used to analyze photos of the formalin-preserved specimens to obtain morphological measurements and create a gonadal index (gonad area/bell area). As the preservation method caused a loss in biomass of the collected medusae, we made a correction factor to convert the measurements of the preserved organisms to live ones. The medusae showcased slightly higher gonadal index in the medusae during winter than summer indicating an increased effort towards reproduction when resources are depleted. Understanding the links between oceanographic conditions and population dynamics of gelatinous predators will allow us to better predict their effects on zooplankton community dynamics. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26739 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | en_US |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-US | en_US |
| dc.subject | Cnidarian jellyfish | en_US |
| dc.subject | hydromedusae | en_US |
| dc.subject | Pacific Northwest | en_US |
| dc.title | Does the nutritional state of jellyfish vary with season along the Pacific Northwest Coast? | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis / Dissertation | en_US |