Late developmental stages of marine copepods in the genus Calanus can spend extended periods in a dormant stage (diapause). During the growth season, copepods must accumulate sufficient lipid stores to survive diapause. Predation risk is often overlooked as a potential diapause-inducing cue. We tested experimentally if predation risk in combination with high or low food availability leads to differences in lipid metabolism, and potentially diapause initiation. Expression of lipid metabolism genes showed that food availability influences the copepods’ ability to cope with predator stress. Predation caused upregulation of lipid catabolism with high food, and downregulation with low food. Stage development and molecular markers demonstrated that copepods did not enter diapause, instead, development occurred faster in copepods with predator stress. This study demonstrates that lipid metabolism may be a sensitive endpoint for changes in the environment. Our findings can contribute towards understanding the mechanisms behind diapause timing. 

In the study described above, DNA was extracted from each specimen's antennules and used in a PCR reaction of 6 InDels. The dataset presented here contains the resulting genotypes, with the corresponding species ID attributed to each genotype.

All the invididuals genotyped are adult females.

Missing values in genotypes are indicated by the value: "0".