Measurements on each beaker’s final chl a concentration from larval food limitation experiments conducted on the sand dollar Dendraster excentricus

<p>This dataset contains measurements on each beaker’s final chl a concentration.</p> <p><strong>Study summary:</strong><br /> In this study of food limitation in the sand dollar <em>Dendraster excentricus</em>, we attempted to constrain estimates of the chl a boundary between food-limited and food-unlimited growth by carrying out experiments in nearshore coastal waters of southern California, which frequently have chl a levels &gt;2 ugL-1. We reared larvae in the laboratory in natural seawater collected from the field, as well as in reduced and supplemented food treatments created from this natural seawater. To supplement this investigator-generated variation in food level, we repeated this experiment six times over the course of two years to take advantage of temporal variation in chl a. Within experiments, we assessed whether larvae were food limited by looking both for evidence of food-level induced phenotypic plasticity, and by generating population-level estimates of time to metamorphic competence.</p>本数据集收录了各烧杯的最终叶绿素a（chlorophyll a）浓度测定结果。 **研究概况：** 本研究针对沙钱（sand dollar）*Dendraster excentricus*的食物限制效应展开，旨在明确并约束食物限制生长与食物充足生长之间的叶绿素a浓度阈值。实验选址于南加州近岸沿海水域——该区域叶绿素a浓度常高于2 μg·L⁻¹。研究团队采用野外采集的天然海水，在实验室中培育沙钱幼体，并基于该天然海水构建了食物浓度降低与食物添加两组处理。为丰富食物水平的变异梯度，我们在两年内重复开展了6次实验，以利用叶绿素a浓度的时间维度变化。在各次实验中，我们通过两种方式评估幼体是否受食物限制：一是检测食物浓度诱导的表型可塑性证据，二是估算种群水平下幼体达到变态可诱导状态所需的时长。