Abstract

The muricid gastropod Acanthina monodon deposits egg capsules in both subtidal and intertidal environments. Intertidal egg capsules are naturally exposed during low tides to sublethal environmental stressors, including desiccation and fluctuations in temperature and salinity. This study was undertaken to determine if juveniles hatching from intertidal egg capsules show reduced rates of feeding or growth. This research therefore compares the performance of juveniles during the first month of post-hatching life, according to whether the juveniles had developed in capsules that had been naturally deposited intertidally or subtidally. We found that juveniles that hatched from intertidal egg capsules grew more slowly than those that hatched from subtidally collected capsules. Moreover, juveniles that hatched from intertidal egg capsules consumed fewer prey per week and ate more slowly than those that hatched from subtidal capsules, although by the end of the study, the total dry weight of juveniles from the two environments was no longer significantly different. Even so, the final mean organic content of juveniles that had hatched from subtidal capsules was significantly higher than that of juveniles that had hatched from capsules of intertidal origin, suggesting that the juveniles from intertidal egg capsules prioritized inorganic shell growth over tissue growth. These results suggest that the intertidal placement of egg capsules imposes stresses on embryos that subsequently reduce rates of juvenile feeding and shell growth, demonstrating how sublethal stresses experienced during early, pre-hatching development in the field interacting with likely maternal effects can produce deleterious latent effects in later life.