Transitions during cephalopod life history: the role of habitat, environment, functional morphology and behaviour

Cephalopod life cycles generally share a set of stages that take place in different habitats and are adapted to specific, though variable, environmental conditions. Throughout the lifespan, individuals undertake a series of brief transitions from one stage to the next. Four transitions were identified: fertilisation of eggs to their release from the female (1), from eggs to paralarvae (2), from paralarvae to subadults (3) and from subadults to adults (4). An analysis of each transition identified that the changes can be radical (i.e. involving a range of morphological, physiological and behavioural phenomena and shifts in habitats) and critical (i.e. depending on environmental conditions essential for cohort survival). This analysis underlines that transitions from eggs to paralarvae (2) and from paralarvae to subadults (3) present major risk of mortality, while changes in the other transitions can have evolutionary significance. This synthesis suggests that more accurate evaluation of the sensitivity of cephalopod populations to environmental variation could be achieved by taking into account the ontogeny of the organisms. The comparison of most described species advocates for studies linking development and ecology in this particular group.Jean-Paul Robin, Michael Roberts, Lou Zeidberg, Isobel Bloor, Almendra Rodriguez, Felipe Briceño, Nicola Downey, Maite Mascaró, Mike Navarro, Angel Guerra, Jennifer Hofmeister, Diogo D. Barcellos, Silvia A.P. Lourenço, Clyde F.E. Roper, Natalie A. Moltschaniwskyj, Corey P. Green, Jennifer Mathe

Does more mean worse? Three decades of enterprise policy in the Tees Valley

This paper argues that there have been three distinct phases of enterprise policy in the UK in the past 30 years: the 1970s saw no effective enterprise policy ('policy off); the 1980s witnessed an attempt to increase the number of start-ups; and the 1990s saw a concentration on 'business quality'. This paper looks at how enterprise has evolved in Cleveland/Tees Valley over the past three decades. It suggests-and finds-that businesses in the 1980s were more numerous but of lower 'quality' (even if the influence of unemployment is accounted for) than those from the 1970s and 1990s. This implies that we should be cautious about the value of policy attempts to increase business formation rates in areas such as Cleveland/Tees Valley