Bivalves maintain repair when faced with chronically repeated mechanical stress
Description
Shells of the California mussel (Mytilus californianus) provide protection against a lifetime of threats. We experimentally quantified the animal's capacity to repair in response to chronic mechanical stress. Specifically, once a week for approximately seven months, we applied 15 cycles of a compressive load to whole live mussels. At the end of seven months, we compared the shell strength of stressed and non-stressed control mussels. We also compared morphology, growth, evidence of shell damage and repair, soft tissue dry weight, and mortality between groups. We have uploaded three .csv data files, one .R code file, and one .pdf readme. CraneDenny_DataReadME.pdf provides further details about each csv and a detailed description of the contents of each column. CraneDenny_FatigueRepair.csv provides the bulk of the experimental data, reporting all details about all the mussels involved in the primary experiment. CraneDenny_FatigueCycle.csv provides detailed information about each loading cycle from the weekly compressive loading treatment. CraneDenny_FieldDamagedShells.csv provides detailed information about damage and repair from a supplementary group of mussels collected from low-shore and high-shore areas. CraneDenny_FiguresandAnalyses.R provides code to recreate all figures and analyses from the associated manuscript.