Where Do Larvae Go? Some Go Really Far, but Others Maybe Not That Far.

Abstract

The Biological Bulletin has been a source of studies on marine larvae since its inception and contains contributions on larval life history, evolution, ecology, feeding, and physiology, among other topics. Larvae as organisms has been a focal topic in the journal. While papers on insect and vertebrate larvae were common in the early years, recent volumes mainly address marine larvae. In consideration of the 125th anniversary of the journal, I scanned the first 25 volumes, and I also queried Web of Science (Clavariate Analytics) for the topic “larvae” in The Biological Bulletin. The earliest papers are anatomical and behavioral and cover all animal groups (e.g., bowfin embryos, Prather, 1900. Biol. Bull. 1: 57–80; ant larvae, Wheeler, 1900. Biol. Bull. 2: 1–31; zoanthid larvae, Cary, 1904. Biol. Bull. 7: 75–78; geotropism in sea urchin larvae, Lyon, 1906. Biol. Bull. 12: 21–22; heliotropism in shrimp larvae, Lyon, 1906. Biol. Bull. 12: 23–25). My search of the publication “Biological Bulletin” in Web of Science (back to its start in 1965) returned over 4900 titles (not counting meeting abstracts). Adding “larvae” as a topic returned 741 titles, indicating that 15% of all contributions mention larvae. Three articles on marine larvae are among the top 10 most cited titles in the journal. Two are on larval dispersal (Shanks, 2009. Biol. Bull. 216: 373–385 [496 citations] and Scheltema, 1971. Biol. Bull. 140: 284–322 [451 citations]), and a third is on fertilization in the field (Pennington, 1985. Biol. Bull. 169: 417–430 [444 citations]). I will discuss the two papers on larval dispersal for contrast. Scheltema (1971) addresses the possibility that larvae are transported long distances across the ocean and maintain genetic continuity. In particular, he made this argument for some species of gastropods that are found on both sides of the Atlantic. The study maps where larvae of 10 coastal species were found in plankton samples taken at stations all across the northern Atlantic ocean (Scheltema’s figs. 4–12) in both warm-temperate and tropical waters. Although the presence of coastal larvae in open ocean waters