Dataset: Delaware Bay Oyster Samples

The Selection along Estuarine Gradients in Oysters (SEGO) project is a collaborative NSF-funded effort to measure and understand the dynamics of short term adaptive change at small spatial scale. We focused on eastern oysters as an example of a common marine life history – high fecundity, complex life cycle with early larval dispersal, and sedentary (sessile for oysters) life after larval settlement. The data assembled in “NSF oyster tissues BCO-DMO” are collections made over three years for two types of genomic analysis: (1) annual adult samples collected along the axis of the Delaware Bay estuary to capture a gradient in potentially stressful low salinities, (2) adult samples collected from mid-bay for experimental low-salinity challenge experiments, and (3) spat and broodstock collected for low salinity challenge experiments directly on wild spat or on larval progeny of broodstock collected from low vs. moderate salinity, respectively. Transect adults were collected by dredge in 2018, 2019 and 2021 from the same 5 subset of sites, each year, that the Rutgers Haskin lab consistently monitors every year to manage the oyster fishery. By piggy backing on the Haskin monitoring effort, the SEGO project has benefited from the long term data and deep understanding that Rutgers scientists have built about the Delaware Bay oyster population. 2021 was an exception because oyster juveniles (spat) were found at three additional sites and collected and analyzed. Two replicate challenge experiments on adults were accomplished in 2019 and 2020 using similar-size oysters collected from the highest oyster density part of the Delaware Bay population where environmental variation seems to generate the least mortality. Full details on the challenge experiments, and genomic comparison of survivors vs. nonsurvivors, is being prepared for publication. The analytical context involved low salinity challenge experiments on wild collected spat in 2020 – those methods and results are in press in Journal of Shellfish Research. Finally, broodstock collected in low vs. moderate salinity regions of the estuary were spawned to conduct a low salinity challenge experiment on their larvae, but larval performance and survival was too low for meaningful results.