Some parameters of growth in the common intertidal barnacle, Balanus balanoides (L.)

Abstract

It is difficult to determine the weight or nitrogen content of the living tissues of an operculate barnacle without destroying it. It has been customary, there-fore, in ecological work to express growth in terms of various parameters determined from repeated measurements of the shell. Moore (1934) employed shell volume calculated from the height and basal diameters; others (Costlow & Bookhout, 1953, 1956; Mawatari, Hirosaki & Kobayashi, 1954a, b) have used the area of the basis. Most commonly, however, in growth-rate studies the length of the basis measured through the rostro-carinal axis has been used (Hatton, 1938; Barnes & Powell, 1953). Recently, working with animals cultured in the laboratory when the cast of an individual could be obtained subsequent to ecdysis, Costlow & Bookhout (1957) have used the size of the mouthparts as a measure of growth after first establishing their relation to body size. The space, both areal and volumetric, occupied by a sedentary animal is of primary importance in studies of its ecology and measurements of shell-size are, therefore, adequate for many purposes. For some aspects of growth and ecology it is, nevertheless, very desirable that the relation between such parameters and others, more directly connected with the living material, should be established.