A snail's pace: A preliminary analysis of the effects of stress and genetics on movement of Haliotis

Behavioural responses of farmed South African abalone Haliotis midae L. to disturbances caused by husbandry procedures

“…This study did not quantify the metabolic cost of activity in H. midae, but research on other haliotids suggested that movement in some species is stress related (Robinson et al 2013) and that this activity leads to an increased need for dietary and metabolic energy, yet with differences between species within the genus (Donavan et al 1999). The importance of movement as an indicator of the stress response has been suggested by Cenni et al (2009).…”

“…Many abalone species and other molluscs emerge from their shelters at night (Wood 1993;Cenni et al 2009) to feed or to migrate to new sites (Shepherd and Godoy 1989). Movement has also been reported after abalone had been disturbed (Evans 1961;Tarr 1995) either by predators (Hansen and Gosselin 2014), dislocated rocks and boulders (Sousa 1979) or handling (Poore 1972;Robinson et al 2013) and reseeding of natural stocks (Werner et al 1995). In the wild, H. midae cope with disturbances by wave action by attaching themselves to rocks and substrate with their strong pedal muscle, and once they have settled in a suitable location, they rarely move away from it (Tarr 1995).…”

“…The distance travelled after a disturbance caused by handling has been suggested as an indicator variable of the stress response in H. laevigata (Robinson et al 2013) and H. asinina (Baldwin et al 2007). H. asinina is a relatively active species, which exhibits rapid escape responses following disturbances, resulting in a fast increase in metabolic rate reaching levels, which were approximately 5.5 times higher than values for resting abalone (Baldwin et al 2007).…”

“…Research and development resulted in the improvement of pelleted diets (Sales and Britz 2001), husbandry conditions (Yearsley 2007;Naylor et al 2011) and health management (Simon et al 2005), but no information is available about the behaviour of this species under farm conditions. In particular, an understanding of factors causing locomotion is important as it has been shown that crawling activity had a high metabolic energy demand in H. kamtschatkana (Donavan et al 1999) and that locomotion is an indicator of stress in haliotids (Baldwin et al 2007;Cenni et al 2009;Robinson et al 2013). Carefoot (1997, 1999) investigated the cost of transport in H. kamtschatkana and suggested that adhesive crawling in this species required 44.1 J kg -1 m -1 of energy (Donavan et al 1999), with a fast increase in energy requirement as the speed of locomotion increased.…”

Assessment of negative phototaxis in long-term fasted Glyptocidaris crenularis: a new insight into measuring stress responses of sea urchins in aquaculture

“…The most signifi cant application is to measure the stress responses of sea urchins in aquaculture. Robinson et al (2013) provides a good example of using a behavioral approach as an early warning indicator of the health of aquacultured Haliotis .…”