The role of early life history on the survival of coral reef fishes - opening the Black Box

海洋生态学和渔业管理中一个悬而未决的基本问题是——是什么影响了在幼虫期存活下来并加入珊瑚礁种群的个体数量？理论研究表明，后代质量的微小变化会导致幼虫期存活数量的巨大变化。后代质量的哪些方面决定了谁能存活在很大程度上是未知的。我们使用多学科的方法来探索是什么影响了成虫产生的后代的质量，以及后代在孵化前或孵化时的特征是否决定了存活下来加入生殖群体的个体的身份。

A fundamental unanswered question in marine ecology and fisheries management is - what influences the number of individuals that survive the larval phase to join a reef population? Theoretical studies show that small changes in the quality of offspring can lead to large changes in the numbers surviving the larval phase. What aspects of offspring quality determine who survives is largely unknown. We use a multidisciplinary approach to explore what influences the quality of offspring spawned by adults, and whether offspring traits prior to or at hatching determine the identity of individuals that survive to join the reproductive population.