I am currently in the process of designing my graduate project, examining dietary inputs into altered clam beaches, and examining how various abiotic and biotic factors influence the health of individual clams along various beaches at different altered states. We are looking at working with Butter Clams (Saxidomus giganteus) or Littleneck Clams (Macoma Nasuta).
I am hoping for some direction on methods where we can examine individual bivalve condition in the field, possibly over a few months or as a snapshot. Dietary inputs will be examined using a stable isotope mixing model, ideally with H,N, and C isotopes, and we will be examining absorbed food sources with fatty acid analysis for taxonomic analysis later.
Are there more concise or efficient methods for individual bivalve condition apart from a condition index?
Just looking for starting literature to begin dissecting this puzzle, no pun intended.
You could use a multivariate index using a principle component analysis:
Lets say you have impacted beaches and non-impacted beaches and you have multiple measures of clam health like:
1) biomass
2) length
3) shell hardness maybe
4) parasite load
5) add your favorite literature measure here...
Feed this data into a principal component analysis or a nonparametric equivalent (see Primer software for example) and you could come up with a multivariate index of clam health. You could then relate that to your other measures of dietary input in the local environments.
I looked up the name Arnie Eversole (Clemson professor) who we hired at times to inventory mussels for us at USFS in South Carolina. I see he is a research gate user. You might try contacting him through researchgate (send him a direct message), he has publications, contacts and expertise. There is at least one freshwater mussel group or organization of interested professionals and scientists you might want to search for, perhaps join.
Hi,
if I understood well you don't want to sacrifice the animal when you sample but rather follow it and take repeated measures on the same subject, correct? If this is the case, it is more complicated because for condition indices you will need some measurement of meat versus shell that you can't take in vivo... It could be interesting to look into some sort of physiological stress measure (e.g. neutral red assay) that can be performed in vivo. Other than that, what Mike Lane suggested in the first answer is a great way to analyze your data for biotic and abiotic factors influence!
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