Evaluating the influences of temperature, primary production, and evolutionary history on bivalve growth rates

Organismal metabolic rates reflect the interaction of environmental and physiological factors. Thus, calcifying organisms that record growth history can provide insight into both their own physiology and life history and the ancient environments in which they lived. However, interpreting them requires understanding which environmental factors have the greatest influence on growth rate, and to what extent evolutionary history constrains growth rates across lineages. We integrated satellite measurements of sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a concentration with a database of growth coefficients, body sizes, and lifespans for 692 populations of living marine bivalves in 195 species, set within the context of a new maximum likelihood phylogeny of bivalves. We find that environmental predictors overall explain only a small proportion of variation in growth coefficient across all species; temperature is a better predictor of growth coefficient than food supply, and growth coefficient is ...