Early life history, recruitment processes and settlement of spiny lobsters

The early life history of shallow-water palinurids consists of a long-lived (months), widely dispersed coastal then oceanic phyllosoma larval phase, followed by a much briefer postlarval puerulus phase that is first oceanic and then benthic. Our knowledge of larvae, and postlarvae before settlement, is still fragmentary. Many species remain undescribed; in few is larval ecology known beyond that based simply on sparse distributional data; even feeding is poorly understood. But it is increasingly clear that the oceanography and larval behaviour are important in larval retention and recruitment. The way forward with the likely paucity of dedicated phyllosoma sampling in the near future is through larval culture, opportunistic plankton sampling, fuller use of historic plankton collections, modelling of larval trajectories, and use of developing technologies such as bioacoustics. Pueruli are essentially non-feeding, and the oceanography and ocean climate affect settlement levels. Settlement takes place in structurally complex items such as algae, or in holes and crevices in rock.