As Daphnia have an important role in freshwater food webs, it is important to understand how environmental stressors affect their survival and life history traits.
Daphnia pulex were first acutely exposed to a combination of NaCl salinities (0.00-10.0 g/L) and fish-exuded kairomone. The 24 and 48 hour LC50 values were 0.401 and 0.159 g/L in kairomone-absence and 1.962 and 1.007 g/L in kairomone-presence. Hence, survival decreased with increasing salinity, while the kairomone enhanced daphnid resistance to salinity below 2 g/L.
During the chronic exposure to salinity (0.00-1.5 g/L) combined with the fish-exuded kairomone, impacts of temperature and food were also investigated. Survival decreased significantly with increased salinity, while the kairomone had a positive impact on survival at intermediate salinity levels, suggesting an antagonistic relationship. Temperature alone had a significant negative impact on survival and its combined effect with salinity and fish kairomone was synergistic. However, the impact of food limitation was insignificant.
Life history parameters were affected by both salinity and the fish-exuded kairomone, the combination of which significantly decreased the body length: width ratio. Egg number/individual decreased with salinity and increased in the presence of the fish kairomone.
In conclusion, the combined impact of salinity and fish-exuded kairomone significantly affected daphnid survival and life history traits in a non-linear manner, such that fish kairomone enhanced daphnid resistance to intermediate salinity levels. Moreover, the combined effect of salinity, temperature and fish kairomone on daphnid survival was also significant.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12609842/index.pdf |
Date | 01 September 2008 |
Creators | Bezirci, Gizem |
Contributors | Beklioglu Yerli, Meryem |
Publisher | METU |
Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | M.S. Thesis |
Format | text/pdf |
Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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