ABSTRACT

Many of the previous chapters in this book have provided in-depth reviews of the physiology and life history of the world’s king crabs, from their birth through adulthood, reproducing new generations of crabs, and eventually dying from disease, parasites, or at the hands of man. This basic information, acquired through painstaking and thoughtful research by generations of scientists, provides the foundation for understanding exploited species and for ensuring their continued availability in the future. But, in order to accomplish these objectives, potentially disparate pieces of basic life-history information need to be pulled together in a way that allows us to understand how they translate into changes in the stocks that we harvest. Otherwise, we may be left asking, “Why do we care if the integrated development time of red king crab zoeae is shortest at 8°C?” Ultimately, we care about life-history characteristics like these because we care about their consequences; we care about where we can nd king crabs, how many there are, and how many we can harvest. One way in which sheries ecologists attempt to understand these characteristics of harvested stocks is by constructing life-history models; that is, by numerically simulating changes in populations over time, based upon each of the individual elements of life history for which data are available or reasonable assumptions can be made. This process begins with information assembly, and in this chapter I will conduct this exercise as it pertains to one specic example of

18.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................539 18.2 Mechanics of Population Structure ...............................................................................................541