Body Size and Oxygen Consumption Rate of the Oval Squid Sepioteuthis lessoniana.

Abstract

Oxygen consumption rates of the young oval squid Sepioteuthis lessoniana (0.033-27.54g BW) reared from eggs and those captured from wild population were investigated on an individual basis by both water bottle and flow-through methods. Oxygen consumption rate (R in ml oxygen/ind./h) increased linearly with increase in BW (W in g) expressed as R=aWb. For squid smaller than about 2g BW, there was not a significant difference in the values of the exponent b and the coef-ficient a between R's measured respectively by water bottle and flow-through methods. The R was not significantly different from each other between squid reared from eggs and captured from the sea. The exponent b and coefficient a for young squids ranged from 0.741 to 0.944 and from 0.697 to 0.966, respectively. There was a tendency for the exponent to change with growth, such as b for the squids less than 0.5g BW being 0.944, while for the squids over 0.5g was 0.813, respec-tively. This suggests that R in very early life stage tends to increase more rapidly with growth than in older stages.