Effects of body-size and season on digestive organ size and the energy balance of cockles fed with a constant diet of phytoplankton.

Seasonal variation in size-dependence of seawater clearance rate, absorption efficiency, oxygen consumption, gill area, length of the crystalline style and dry weight of digestive gland was analyzed in cockles Cerastoderma edule from the Mundaka Estuary, Spain. Experimental determinations were performed monthly (from July 1998 to November 1999) in cockles being fed with Tetraselmis suecica (organic content: 87.84 +/- 1.95%) at a concentration of 3 mm(3)/l for 3 days. Analysis of covariance reveals no seasonal differences in both size-dependence of seawater clearance rate and oxygen consumption, which were found to scale to dry body weight with mass-exponents of 0.56 and 0.62, respectively. No significant correlation was found between absorption efficiency and body weight. Mass-exponents for gill area, dry weight of the digestive gland and length of the crystalline style remained constant among seasons showing values of 0.62, 0.34 and 0.82, respectively. Seasonal trends for every physiological determination were calculated for a standard size (200 mg) cockle: standardized clearance rates and oxygen consumptions followed a similar trend with minimum values in winter ( approximately 0.5 l/h and approximately 100 microl O2/h, respectively) and maximum values during spring-summer ( approximately 1.7 l/h and approximately 250 microl O2/h, respectively), whereas absorption efficiency and food throughput time showed both the opposite pattern with highest values corresponding to winter months ( approximately 50-60% and approximately 5-6 h, respectively), and lowest ( approximately 30% and approximately 3-4 h, respectively) to summer-autumn. Scope for growth exhibited minimum values in winter followed by a rapid increase along the winter-spring transition, maximum values being attained in spring (May) and summer (July). Exponential decline of seasonal values of absorption efficiency associated to rising ingestion rates of organic matter presented an asymptotic minimum at 0.35. Absorption efficiency was positively related to food throughput time, whereas the latter fell to a minimum of 3.548 h with increasing food intake. So, maintenance of throughput time-and consequently absorption efficiency-along with enhanced filtering activity provided cockles with higher absorption rates improving scopes for growth registers during spring and summer. These dynamics might be explained as the consequence of the seasonal digestive adjustments in cockles, which, in fact, were found to increase the size of the digestive organs during that period.