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Environmental regulation of individual body size contributes to geographic variation in clonal life cycle expression

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Abstract

Clonal behavior has been hypothesized to provide an escape from allometric metabolic scaling that limits the maximum mass achieved by a single individual. Here, we demonstrate the capacity of a wide-spread, non-native sea anemone to buffer its colony biomass accumulation rate across environments by modulating ramet body size through environmentally dependent growth, fission, and catabolism. In 2015, thermal reaction norms for growth and fission behavior were constructed using clonal lines of the sea anemone Diadumene lineata. In 2018, variation in growth patterns under a factorial cross of temperature level and oxygen availability was examined to test the hypothesis that individual ramet size is regulated by oxygen limitation in accordance with optimal size theory. Across a wide range of temperatures, colonies accumulated a similar amount of biomass despite a radical shift from unitary to clonal growth, supporting fission as a mechanism to buffer growth rates over a range of conditions. Individual body size appears to be regulated by the environment with increased temperature and reduced oxygen modifying fission and mass-specific growth patterns, leading to the production of smaller-bodied ramets in warm conditions. However, whether anemones in common garden conditions reduce individual body size through catabolism or fission depends on the region of origin and may relate to differences in seasonal temperature patterns among coastlines, which influence the energetic benefits of fission rate plasticity.

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Data availability

Data generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C.R. Hadfield and K. Atkins for logistics and help in the mesocosm at the Marine Biological Association; M. Yant for help maintaining anemones at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; J. Mutz and J. Imhoff for field assistance; J. Mutz and two anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript; and B. Hughes and K. Wasson for access to Elkhorn Slough. Funding was provided by the PADI Foundation (#21902) to WHR; the Ray Lankester Investigatorship of the Marine Biological Association of the UK (2017–2019) to SAKH; Start-up funds from the University of Alabama at Birmingham to SAKH; the Marine Biological Association of the UK Fellowship to NM. WHR was supported as a UAB MERIT postdoctoral fellow during the preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Will H. Ryan & Stacy A. Krueger-Hadfield

  2. Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

    Will H. Ryan

  3. The Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Plymouth, UK

    Leoni Adams, Nova Mieszkowska, Kathryn E. Pack & Stacy A. Krueger-Hadfield

  4. Benthic Ecology, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Guido Bonthond

  5. School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Nova Mieszkowska

  6. Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Kathryn E. Pack

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  1. Will H. Ryan
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Correspondence to Will H. Ryan.

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Ryan, W.H., Adams, L., Bonthond, G. et al. Environmental regulation of individual body size contributes to geographic variation in clonal life cycle expression. Mar Biol 166, 157 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-019-3608-z

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