Metabolic rates of benthic deep-sea decapod crustaceans decline with increasing depth primarily due to the decline in temperature

Abstract

The oxygen consumption rates of 11 species of benthic deep-sea decapod crustaceans were measured at a variety of temperatures to test the hypothesis that the metabolic rates of benthic crustaceans decline with increasing depth of occurrence only to the extent explained by the decline in temperature with depth. The species were captured at depths between 150 and 2000m off Southern California using an epibenthic beam trawl equipped with a thermally protecting cod-end to bring the animals to the surface uncontaminated by sediment and at the depth temperature. The data, combined with those for six species of shallower-living crustaceans from California waters, showed a significant decline in oxygen consumption rate with increased species' depths of occurrence, when the measurements were made at temperatures appropriate to each species' depth range. There was no significant relation between wet weight and depth of occurrence in these species. When the data were adjusted to 10°C using a moderate temperature effect factor (corresponding to Q 10 values of 2–2.3 depending on the species and temperature range), the significant relationship between oxygen consumption rate and depth was lost, indicating that the observed decline with depth was due to the decline in temperature with depth. When the relationship between metabolic rate and depth of occurrence for the most active (carideans and penaeid) species were compared (ANCOVA) with that for the rest of the species, the active species had significantly higher rates. By combining this data set with data from the literature for a wide variety of shallow-living benthic decapod crustaceans, it was possible to create a data set of 35 species in which the effects of temperature, minimum depth of occurrence and body mass could be separated by multiple linear regression. This demonstrated highly significant effects of size and temperature, but no significant effect of depth for the entire data set and for the data set excluding penaeids and carideans. In contrast, the carideans showed a significant effect of depth on metabolic rate. This is discussed in terms of the adaptive and selective factors responsible for the well-known decline in metabolic rates of midwater crustaceans and fishes, an effect which does exceed the effect of temperature. It is suggested that the typical pattern for deeper living animals may be that metabolic rates on average vary as a function of depth due primarily to variation in temperature, except for the visually orienting pelagic groups (cephalopods, crustaceans and fishes). For those benthic forms which are particularly visually oriented and/or partially pelagic some significant depth-related decline in metabolism beyond that due to the decline in temperature is expected.