Measuring Daphnia life history in the wild: The efficacy of individual field cages

O'Connor, Michael, Sadler, Daniel E, Brunner, Franziska S, Reynolds, Alan, White, Nicola, Price, Stephen and Plaistow, Stewart J ORCID: 0000-0002-9003-6271 (2021) Measuring Daphnia life history in the wild: The efficacy of individual field cages. ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, 11 (23). pp. 16927-16935.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8326

Abstract

Life-history studies are often conducted in a laboratory environment where it is easy to assay individual animals. However, factors such as temperature, photoperiod, and nutrition vary greatly between laboratory and field environments, making it difficult to compare results. Consequently, there is a need to study individual life histories in the field, but this is currently difficult in systems such as Daphnia where it is not possible to mark and track individual animals. Here, we present a proof of principle study showing that field cages are a reliable method for collecting individual-level life-history data in Daphnia magna. As a first step, we compared the life history of paired animals reared outside and inside cages to test the hypothesis that cages allow free flow of algal food resources. We then used a seminatural mesocosm setting to compare the performance of individual field cages versus glass jars refilled with mesocosm water each day. We found that cages did not inhibit food flow and that differences in life histories between three clones detected in the jar assays were also detectable using the much less labor-intensive field cages. We conclude that field cages are a feasible approach for collecting individual-level life-history data in systems such as Daphnia where individual animals cannot be marked and tracked.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Daphnia, field cage, field experiment, life history, multivariate phenotype
Divisions:	Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	29 Oct 2021 07:21
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2023 23:25
DOI:	10.1002/ece3.8326
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8326
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3141956