Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
Dyopedos monacanthus inhabits self-constructed mud whips on marine soft-bottoms. Juveniles stay on the mud whip of their mother for extended time periods after they hatch from her brood pouch. During the main reproductive period in the spring, parental females have been observed in the aquarium and collected from the field. Specimens of D. monacanthus have been collected simultaneously from the intake filter from the sea-water laboratory. Several consecutive clutches have been found on the whip of one female. Most juveniles are small (1 mm in size), but they grow to sizes of >2 mm on the whip of their mother. In the aquarium, juveniles usually hatched immediately after the females had been attended by males. They then clung to their mother's whip for about two weeks. Most parental females in the aquarium produced three broods during a time period of about six weeks. In the field an average of 36 parental females m-2 were found in April, and an average number of 75 juveniles clung to each female's whip. The average number of juveniles found on the females’ whips declined in May and June. Many juveniles appeared in the sea-water intake filter starting in mid April. Most juveniles caught in the intake filter were between 2 and 3 mm in size which corresponds well with their size at leaving the female's whip. In mid May, all amphipods disappeared within a few days from the aquarium, when shrimp Crangon septemspinosa started to become more active again. Many big females disappeared in the field at that time too, and in mid June parental females were smaller than in the previous months. The amphipod D. monacanthus belongs in the category of epibenthic suspension-feeding amphipods. It is probably very susceptible to epibenthic predation and extended parental care is primarily a mechanism to lift very small juveniles above the viscous sublayer in the benthic boundary layer.