Abstract Earthworms have a major role in soils and are used as biological indicators for ecological risk assessment. Aporrectodea caliginosa s.s. is one of the dominant earthworm species in agroecosystems and a good candidate for ecotoxicological testing. In order to improve knowledge on its life cycle, we performed growth and reproduction experiments. These data were used to calibrate an energy-based model that displayed good descriptions of A. caliginosa life cycle parameters under different feeding conditions (ad libitum, food limitations, or absence of food). Here we showed that the maintenance costs were negligible, resulting in a linear growth in length when food was provided ad libitum (i.e., without any restriction). We also found that the switch from the juvenile to adult stage depended on the individual weight, and that the threshold weight was not influenced by the amount of provided food (horse dung). Moreover, we provided evidence that once adults, if they were not isolated from other individuals, the energy was entirely allocated to cocoon production, which only depended on the available food amount, without any effect of the earthworm density. Finally, we discussed the usefulness of our energy-based model to support the set up and analyses of ecotoxicological tests and experiments.

中文翻译：

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更好地了解蚯蚓 Aporrectodea caliginosa 的生命周期：新数据和基于能量的建模

摘要 蚯蚓在土壤中具有重要作用，被用作生态风险评估的生物指标。Aporrectodea caliginosa ss 是农业生态系统中的主要蚯蚓物种之一，也是生态毒理学测试的良好候选者。为了提高对其生命周期的了解，我们进行了生长和繁殖实验。这些数据用于校准基于能量的模型，该模型在不同饲养条件下（随意、食物限制或没有食物）显示了 A. caliginosa 生命周期参数的良好描述。在这里，我们表明维护成本可以忽略不计，导致当食物随意提供（即没有任何限制）时长度呈线性增长。我们还发现，从少年阶段到成年阶段的转变取决于个体的体重，并且阈值重量不受所提供食物（马粪）量的影响。此外，我们提供的证据表明，一旦成虫，如果不与其他个体隔离，能量完全分配给茧生产，这仅取决于可用的食物量，而不受蚯蚓密度的任何影响。最后，我们讨论了我们的基于能量的模型在支持生态毒理学测试和实验的建立和分析方面的有用性。