Assessing the size at maturity, spawning, and condition of the truncate soft-shell clam ( Mya truncata ) of southern Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada

The truncate soft-shell clam is an important source of country food for Inuit communities across the territory of Nunavut, Canada. also plays an important role in marine ecosystems, yet there is little understanding of their life history and condition in Canadian Arctic waters. To provide a foundati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PeerJ (San Francisco, CA) CA), 2022-06, Vol.10, p.e13231-e13231, Article e13231
Main Authors: Wood, Jessica M, Donovan, Meghan, Grant, Scott M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algae
Animals
Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science
Arctic
Canada
Climate change
Community
Condition
Ecology
Ecosystem
Female
Fisheries management
Food sources
Frobisher Bay
Gonads
Ice
Inuit
Length-weight relationships
Life history
Male
Marine Biology
Marine ecosystems
Maturity
Mollusks
Mya
Mya truncata
Nunavut
Phytoplankton
Sediments
Sexual maturity
Soft-shell clams
Spawning
Zoology
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Summary:The truncate soft-shell clam is an important source of country food for Inuit communities across the territory of Nunavut, Canada. also plays an important role in marine ecosystems, yet there is little understanding of their life history and condition in Canadian Arctic waters. To provide a foundation on which aspects of the life history and condition of of Baffin Island can be monitored in the future with a changing climate and fishery development, this study estimated size at maturity and provides insights into the spawning cycle and weight-length condition indices of clams from inner Frobisher Bay and the north shore of the Hudson Strait. Male and female exhibited similar lengths at 50% attainment of sexual maturity, 31 mm and 32 mm shell length (SL), respectively. Most (77%) of the sexually mature collected from inner Frobisher Bay in late August and 35% of clams collected from the Hudson Strait in early September were in the ripe stage of gonadal development. These results lead us to suggest a spring spawning season and that invest in gonadal development for the next year's spawning during the late summer-early autumn ice-free season while phytoplankton concentrations are high. Dry bodyweight-SL relationships were used to show that condition can differ significantly over small and large spatial scales based on plotted 95% confidence intervals.
ISSN:2167-8359
2167-8359
DOI:10.7717/peerj.13231