Early developmental stages including embryos and larvae are often considered to be particularly sensitive to environmental conditions. Despite increasing focus on extreme environmental conditions that may predict future conditions under rapidly changing climate scenarios, it remains important to understand the effects of normal environmental variation on developmental stages. The Bay of Panama experiences seasonal upwelling, so organisms that reproduce year-round experience a range of temperatures, from 24°C to 29°C during upwelling and non-upwelling respectively. We tested the effects of larval environmental temperature (24°C, 27°C, and 30°C) and parental diet (single, low-food or high, mixed algal diets) and parental environmental temperature (same temperature treatments) on larvae of the intertidal slipper snail, Crepidula cf. marginalis. Larvae of 111 full-sibling families were raised in all three temperature treatments at consistent salinity (30ppt).
Results/Conclusions
Larval survival was assessed after 3 and 6 days, and larval growth was measured after 6 days. Overall, survival decreased with increasing temperature. However, larvae from parents in the 30°C treatment had higher survival at 30°C than larvae from parents acclimated to 24°C or 27°C. Larval survival at 30°C was also higher from parents on the low-food diet. Larval hatching size decreased with temperature as well. The intergenerational and interactive effects found in this study highlight the importance of multi-factorial studies to better understand organismal responses to a complex, changing environment.`