Larval Northern Rock Sole Growth Under Acidification and Food Stress

Laboratory experiments found larval feeding regime had a much larger impact on growth than elevated CO2 levels, with high-feeding larvae being 84.2% heavier by 31 days post-hatch. Separate trials examined pre-flexion (3-31 days) and post-flexion (31-87 days) stages, revealing food limitation effects were greater during metamorphosis. The results suggest nutritional stress may be a more critical factor than ocean acidification for this commercial North Pacific fish species.

Use Cases

• Modeling population productivity of commercial fish species based on interactive effects of acidification and prey availability.
• Designing multi-stressor climate experiments for marine larvae using the documented pre- and post-flexion stage protocols.
• Comparing the relative impact of nutritional stress versus CO2 levels on growth metrics like dry weight and body condition.

Strengths

• Dataset is hosted on multiple authoritative platforms (NASA Earthdata, Data.gov), indicating vetting and importance.
• Experimental design is precisely described, including specific larval stages (pre-flexion: 3-31 days, post-flexion: 31-87 days) and quantified growth differences (84.2%, 3.3x).

Limitations

• Column names and data structure are not provided by any source, limiting immediate analytical utility.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (2014-06-27 vs. 2026-03-05) create uncertainty about data currency.
• Key metadata such as row count, file size, license, and author are consistently missing across all sources.

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI (National Centers for Environmental Information)

Collection Method

Controlled laboratory experiment.

Time Range

Experimental period covers larval stages from 3 to 87 days post-hatch.

Freshness

2026-03-05 23:25:42.346701

Geography

Species (Northern rock sole) is native to the North Pacific.