Effects of Exposure Timing on Expression, PAH Elimination, and Lipid Utilization in Lumpfish Embryos Exposed to Produced Water.

Intentional discharges of produced water from oil production platforms to the marine environment contain a complex mixture of toxicants, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Early life stages of fish are highly sensitive to petrogenic exposure, and short-term exposure during critical periods of embryonic development may have detrimental effects on larvae health and survival. However, why different periods are more sensitive to exposure than others are not fully understood.

Many lifetime growth trajectories for a single mammal.

Despite their importance in shaping life history tactics and population dynamics, individual growth trajectories have only been rarely explored in the wild because their analysis requires multiple measurements of individuals throughout their lifetime and some knowledge of age, a key timer of body growth. The availability of long-term longitudinal studies of two wild boar populations subjected to contrasting environments (rich vs. poor) provided an opportunity to analyze individual growth trajectories.

Grow fast at no cost: no evidence for a mortality cost for fast early-life growth in a hunted wild boar population.

From current theories on life-history evolution, fast early-life growth to reach early reproduction in heavily hunted populations should be favored despite the possible occurrence of mortality costs later on. However, fast growth may also be associated with better individual quality and thereby lower mortality, obscuring a clear trade-off between early-life growth and survival. Moreover, fast early-life growth can be associated with sex-specific mortality costs related to resource acquisition and allocation throughout an individual's lifetime.