Summary: MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES
Mar Ecol Prog Ser
Vol. 318: 81­88, 2006 Published August 3
INTRODUCTION
Growth is commonly defined as an increase in body
mass, while development is the change from an
undifferentiated to an increasingly more organised
state. Due to the strong correlation between them,
models of growth (West et al. 2001) and life history
(Stearns 1992) usually do not explicitly differentiate
between these processes. However, individuals of the
same weight can, and often do, differ in developmen-
tal stage, as seen in copepods (Campbell et al. 2001).
Development may proceed without growth in mass
and vice versa. We therefore propose a model in
which development is separated from growth, but
in which they are linked such that development acts
as a driver of growth. This explicit representation of
development emerged from previous studies on the
short-lived semelparous urochordate Oikopleura dioi-

Source: Aksnes, Dag L. - Institutt for biologi, Universitetet i Bergen

Collections: Environmental Sciences and Ecology; Biology and Medicine