Recruitment Success in Infauna: Costs and Benefits of Juvenile Emigration

沉积系统是一个不断移动的地点马赛克，或多或少对定居的幼虫有风险。动物的移动，以及栖息地的生物控制方面随着它们的移动而变化，这些移动发生在短时间尺度上。许多水生生物的幼体为了应对这种栖息地的生物退化而迁移。这些运动对幼崽的生存有多重要，它们在成长方面的成本有多高？这些是本文提出的研究的核心问题。如果没有测量幼鱼这种运动的成本和/或收益，我们就无法评估沉积系统中的补充模型。拟议中的研究将为三种主要的动物类群——双壳类、多毛类和小甲壳类——的成员提供这些测量数据。

Sedimentary systems are a constantly shifting mosaic of sites that are more or less risky for settling larvae. The infauna move, and the biogenically controlled aspects of the habitat shift with their movements, movements that occur on short temporal scales. The juveniles of many infaunal organisms emigrate in response to such biogenic degradation of the habitat. How important are these movements to the survivorship of the juveniles, how costly are they in terms of growth? These are the central questions of the research proposed herein. Without measurements of the cost and/or benefits of such movements by juveniles, we cannot evaluate our models of recruitment in sedimentary systems. The proposed research will provide those measurements for members of the three dominant infaunal taxa, the bivalves, polychaetes and small crustaceans.