Compensatory population growth in Daphniopsis tibetana Sars (Crustacea: Cladocera) following starvation

Abstract

We speculated that Daphniopsis tibetana may be adapted to short-term lack of food through a mechanism of population growth compensation. D. tibetana were collected from Lake Namuka Co, Tibet, and acclimated to diluted seawater in 2007. All larvae used in experiments were synchronized newborn (<24-h old) and of an average body length of 790 (770–810) μm. We evaluated the effect of continuous starvation for 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 days and intermittent periods of starvation of 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 days on the compensatory population growth effect in D. tibetana. The duration of starvation significantly influenced population growth, body length, and heart rate. After 1 and 3 days of continuous starvation and 0.5 days intermittent starvation, the age of first reproduction was 16.3 days and the reproduction frequency was 0.8 (10 days⁻¹), which were similar to the control group. In these two starved groups, lifetime fecundity values were 426.3 and 412.3, average life spans were 54.5 and 54.3 days, and intrinsic rates of increase (r _m) were 0.136 and 0.133 days⁻¹, respectively, which is significantly higher than the other starved groups and not different from the control group (P > 0.05). In the group with 7, 9, and 11 days of continuously starved groups, body lengths were significantly lower (P < 0.05) than those of controls. With increasing starvation time (1, 3, 5, and 7 days), heart rate progressively decreased (184, 178, 172, and 166 min⁻¹). Body length, measured at the end of the experiment, declined with increasing duration of intermittent starvation. After 2 days of intermittent starvation, final heart rate sharply decreased to 150 min⁻¹, which was highly significantly different from the other treatment groups. The results of this study conclude that D. tibetana is capable of complete compensatory population growth after short-term starvation.