MEPS prepress abstract   -  DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps14667

ABSTRACT: The relationship between adverse environmental conditions and grooming behavior is an unresolved mechanism by which the changing climate may impact reproductive success in animals that brood their eggs. Although important to embryo survival and development in decapod crustaceans, brood grooming by ovigerous females may be impacted by energetically demanding conditions associated with climate change, which may contribute to lethal and sublethal outcomes for brood health and survival. Despite its potential importance to reproduction, brood grooming behavior has not been empirically described in the commercially important marine decapod, the American lobster Homarus americanus, H. Milne Edwards, 1837. The relationship between brood grooming behavior, temperature, and pH was explored at different points in the embryogenesis of American lobster. For a period of 5 mo, egg-bearing lobsters were exposed to different combinations of ecologically relevant conditions of temperature and pH, including those reflecting ocean warming (+4°C), ocean acidification (–0.5 pH), and the combination of warming and acidification. Fecundity, embryo development, and female grooming behavior were assessed at multiple time points. The proportion of time that lobsters spent fanning, but not probing, their broods increased with advancing embryo development. Neither egg loss, nor any measured brood grooming behaviors, varied significantly with temperature or pH in this experiment. American lobster reproduction appears well suited to tolerate future conditions of ocean acidification and warming based on the ability to maintain stable brood grooming and brood mortality levels under a range of conditions.