Reproductive Investment in a Phyletic Giant, the Caribbean King Crab Damithrax spinosissimus: Exploring Egg Production Costs in Large Brooding Marine Inertebrates

摘要: ABSTRACT The Caribbean king crab Damithrax spinosissimus, a phyletie giant and the largest in western Atlantic, was used to explore costs of brooding, terms reproductive investment, marine invertebrates. Given (i) theoretical allometry between gamete production brooding surfaces (ii) increased physiological with brood mass, it expected that larger broods from crabs should suffer higher mortality loss than smaller crabs. It also females allocate disproportionably more resources egg females. In D. fecundity carrying early late embryos varied, respectively, 5.170 26.024 eggs/crab (mean ± SD = 16.569 4.899) 1.966 26.906 (15.147 7.003). disagreement expectation, did not experience during embryo development. Egg eggs varie...