Life Cycle
California fairy shrimp tend to live in large, fairly clear vernal pools and lakes. However, they can survive in clear to turbid water with pH of 6.1–8.5, and they have been found in very small pools. They are tolerant of water temperatures from 5–29 °C (41–84 °F), making them the most heat tolerant fairy shrimp in California.
Female fairy shrimp carry their eggs in a ventral brood sac. The eggs are either dropped to the pool bottom or remain in the brood sac until the mother dies and sinks. When the pool dries out, so do the eggs. They remain in the dry pool bed until rains and other environmental stimuli hatch them.
Resting fairy shrimp eggs are known as cysts. They are capable of withstanding heat, cold and prolonged desiccation. When the pools refill, some, but not all, of the cysts may hatch. The cyst bank in the soil may contain cysts from several years of breeding.
Average time to maturity is about forty-five days. Thirty-one seems to be the minimum time required, which is the longest minimum for any Central Valley fairy shrimp. Adults have been collected from late December to early May.
Read more about this topic: Linderiella Occidentalis
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or cycle:
“Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell,
By what was done and wrought
In season, and so brought
To light: her measures are, how well
Each syllab’e answered, and was formed how fair;
These make the lines of life, and that’s her air.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)