Meeting Abstract
Increased temperatures from global warming can lead to lethal temperatures for the intertidal crabs Petrolisthes cinctipes and P. manimaculus (Decapoda: Anomura). Physiological stress from increased temperature may force P. cinctipes redistribution into cooler environments (Stillman and Somero 1996). However, these crabs have a preferred temperature (15.0±0.4 °C) that is higher than their ambient temperature, 12 °C (Gunderson et al. 2019). To investigate the effects the preferred temperature on vitellogenesis, P. cinctipes and P. manimaculus were collected from November 2018 through July 2019 and exposed to their preferred temperature and placed at high and low densities with conspecifics and congeners. Hemolymph samples were taken from each crab before and after seven-day density and temperature treatments. To quantify the effects of treatments, an ELISA was used to quantify vitellogenin levels in hemolymph before and after treatment (Delmanowski et al. 2017). During winter months, P. cinctipes showed decreased vitellogenesis when exposed to thermal stress (20 °C) (Salas 2017). Exposing P. manimaculus to preferred temperatures increased vitellogenesis. These data support that the preferred temperature of P. cinctipes and P. manimaculus is 15.0±0.4 °C (Gunderson et al. 2019). Research reported in this abstract is supported by NSF grant #1451423 to BT and JS.
