Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2012
A total of 208 Rondeletiola minor were sampled from the eastern Mediterranean with the depth contours of 150, 350 and 550 m. Body sizes of 32 mature females ranged from 11.8 to 19.5 mm dorsal mantle length (ML), that of mature males were 11.1–19.1 mm ML. Potential fecundity varied between 192 and 315 eggs in maturing females, and ripe egg sizes were 1.1–3.0 mm. Ripe egg amount did not exceed 15% of the fecundity. The average number of spermatophores was 176 with two extreme individuals that had 557 and 674 spermatophores, respectively. Spawning occurs continuously with an asynchronous ovulation pattern. Mature animals were found throughout the year with a peak in gonadosomatic index in spring. The life cycle of R. minor was estimated to be 10 months with different cohorts in reproduction depending on how temperature affects the hatching.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.