Dataset: A. pisonii: egg size
Deployment: Griffen_mangroves

We collected ovigerous Aratus pisonii from mixed marsh habitats (Avalon State Park, FL) and mangrove habitats (Anastasia State Park, FL). We gently removed a small portion (<1/3) of each female’s egg mass from the pleopods with forceps within 24 hours of collection from the field. We placed eggs into filtered sea water (~31 ppt) and visually examined under a Leica M205C dissecting microscope at 80X to determine egg developmental stage. For females carrying recently extruded, non-eyed eggs (mangroves n= 10, mixed marsh n=15), which are reflective of initial maternal investment in quantity of egg yolk,  we photographed a subsample of the removed eggs (n=20-30) using a Jenoptik ProgRes C14+ camera attached to the microscope and ProgRes CapturePro v2.8.0 software. We then determined egg size by randomly selecting 10 eggs from the photographed egg mass and measuring the circular area of each egg with imageJ software. We used the measurements of circular area to determine the mean egg volume for each female.