Pandalus borealis is a species of caridean shrimp found in cold parts of the northern Atlantic and northern Pacific Oceans, although the latter population now often is regarded as a separate species, P. eous. The Food and Agriculture Organization refers to them as the northern prawn. Other common names include pink shrimp, deepwater prawn, deep-sea prawn, Nordic shrimp, great northern prawn, northern shrimp, coldwater prawn and Maine shrimp.
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ScavengerScavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that have died from causes other than predation or have been killed by other predators. While sc...
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OviparousOviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
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starts withIn their up to eight-year lifespan, males can reach a length of 12 cm (4.7 in), while females can reach 16.5 cm (6.5 in) long, although typical sizes are much smaller. The size of shrimp at different ages can vary due to temperature changes in the water and sex of the shrimp. The size of Pandalus borealis individuals can differ based on age, temperature of the environment and sex. Higher temperature water has been associated with faster growth.
The shrimp are hermaphroditic, specifically protandrous hermaphrodites. They are born as male, but after approximately two and a half years, their testes turn to ovaries and they complete their lives as females. Northern Shrimp's spawning season begins in the late summer, usually offshore. By early fall the females will start to extrude their eggs onto their abdomen. This is when they will move inshore where their eggs will hatch in the winter.
Pandalus borealis usually lives on a soft muddy bottoms at depths of 20 to 1,330 m (66–4,364 ft), in waters with a temperature of 0 to 8 °C (32–46 °F), although it has been recorded from 9 to 1,450 m (30–4,757 ft) and −2 to 12 °C (28–54 °F). P. borealis thrives in waters where the salinity ranges between 32 and 35 ppt, depending on where the shrimp are at in their life cycle. The distribution of the North Atlantic nominate subspecies P. b. borealis ranges from New England in the United States, Canada's eastern seaboard (off Newfoundland and Labrador and eastern Baffin Island in Nunavut), southern and eastern Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Norway and the North Sea as far south as the English Channel. The North Pacific P. b. eous is found from Japan and Korea, through the Sea of Okhotsk, across the Bering Strait, and as far south as the U.S. state of California. Instead of regarding it as a subspecies, the North Pacific population is often recognized as a separate species, P. eous.
Trophic DNA metabarcoding studies show that Pandalus borealis plays a key role in Arctic food webs, by feeding on a diverse array of prey, including gelatinous zooplankton and chaetognaths. High diversity of fish DNA can also be detected in their stomachs, probably as a result of their role as generalized scavengers. This has led some authors to propose Pandalus borealis as an efficient natural sampler for assessing molecular fish diversity in Arctic marine ecosystems.
