Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

SS45 Temporary Aquatic Ecosystems: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (Spatial and Temporal Connections)

Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001, Time: 4:15:00 PM

Location: Cochiti/Taos

Ripley, B, J, University of San Diego, San Diego, USA, bripley@alum.mit.edu

Holtz, J, , University of San Diego, San Diego, USA, jholtz@acusd.edu

Simovich, M, A, University of San Diego, San Diego, USA, simo@acusd.edu

A CYST BANK LIFE HISTORY MODEL FOR TEMPORARY POOL SHRIMP

Ephemeral pool habitats are a useful model system for studying how life history strategies enable an organism to survive environmental variation. Aquatic invertebrates in these habitats have a life cycle with a rapidly maturing aquatic phase, and a resting stage (cyst) that endures dry periods. There have been no previous attempts to measure the importance of adult growth, survival and reproduction, relative to the cyst bank. We formulated a matrix population model using cyst age within the bank as the state variable to investigate this relationship. We generated 30 matrices with parameters encompassing ranges of likely values for the vital rates of the San Diego fairy shrimp, Branchinecta sandiegonensis. Analyses show that in good years, population growth rate (lambda) is so much greater than one, that populations can persist through multiple years of reproductive failure. While lambda is insensitive to long-term survival in the cyst bank in this deterministic model, we expect the bank to play a larger role in the stochastic model we are formulating. These results will be used to determine restoration strategies for protected ephemeral pool species.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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