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Biol. Bull. 213: 316-324. (December 2007)
© 2007 Marine Biological Laboratory

Role of Maternal Provisioning in Controlling Interpopulation Variation in Hatching Size in the Marine Snail Nucella ostrina

Michelle J. Lloyd1 and Louis A. Gosselin1,2,*

1 Department of Biological Sciences, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, British Columbia V2C 5N3, Canada; and Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, Bamfield, British Columbia VOR 1BO, Canada
2 Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3N3, Canada

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lgosselin{at}tru.ca

This study examined the role of maternal provisioning in controlling interpopulation variation in hatching size in nine isolated populations of the intertidal gastropod Nucella ostrina, in which development to the early juvenile stage takes place within an egg capsule. Variation among populations was almost entirely due to the ratio of nurse eggs to embryo, which explained 65% of the variation in hatching size. Egg size was not a significant predictor of hatching size. Differences among seven of these populations in the nurse egg/embryo ratio were entirely due to the number of nurse eggs allocated per capsule; these populations allocated different numbers of nurse eggs per capsule but allocated the same number of embryos. Intriguingly, the two most wave-sheltered populations allocated significantly more nurse eggs and more embryos to each capsule than did the seven other populations, but they maintained nurse egg/embryo ratios consistent with patterns observed in the other populations. Inter- and intrapopulation variation in hatching size appears to be controlled largely by different mechanisms: within-population variation being controlled mainly by differences in allocation of embryos per capsule, whereas most among-population variation being due to differences in allocation of nurse eggs per capsule.






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