Reproductive Biology of Freshwater Prawn Macrobrachium Vollenhovenii (Herklot, 1857) Caught in Warri River

Abstract

A total number of 338 specimens of Macrobrachium vollenhovenii were bought from fisher folks who fished from Ubeji, Jala and Soroghagbene; but marketed their landings at Ubeji. Specimens were collected at monthly intervals between March and November, 2011. The male to female sex ratio established was 1:2:3. The size at first maturity was 9.0 cm for males and 10.0 cm for females. The length-weight relationship revealed an increase in total length of each specimen as body weight increased. The regression coefficient 'r' was significant at p< 0.05 for male (0.901) and female (0.644) specimens. An average condition factor of 3.9 and 2.74 was recorded for males and females respectively. The Gonado-Somatic-Index (GSI) was generally higher, especially during the month of July for females (0.60) than for males (0.50). Distinct histological changes were observed in the gonads of both sexes. Gonad development revealed five distinct stages (dominant, developing, developed, ripe and spent) for both sexes. Fecundity ranged between 5,540-28,470 eggs, and was highly correlated with total length (0.979) but not with body weight (0.185). Fecundity was highest in the month of July (20,113) and lowest in the month of August (6,140). It could be concluded that matured specimens probably spawn, in March and in July, when GSI were at their peaks. This pattern of breeding suggests that they were capable of multiple spawning within a single reproductive season.

Differentiation and Histological Study of the Ovary in Shrimp Macrobrachium Vollenhovenii Herklots, 1857 (Decapoda Palaemonidae) Of the Bandama River in Côte D'Ivoire

“…The follicle increased in size and volume. Similar observation was made in the same species by 42 . In M. vollenhovenii, the diameter of the cells increases from 2 μm to 40 μm on average during previtellogenesis and reaches 200 to 250 μm during vitellogenesis.…”

Aspects of the bionomics of Brackish Water Prawn (Macrobrachium macrobrachion: Herklots 1851) in the interconnecting lagoons of South-Western Nigeria

“…This implied that fecundity was not a measure of size and the relationship was insignificant. Little wonder why small-sized prawn was observed from this research to possess eggs, a similar situation also observed by [37] on M. lamarrei and [15] on M. vollenhovenii [34], reported that there was no correlation between fecundity and total weight of M. vollenhovenii [38], reported a decline in the number of eggs with an increase in the size of Penaeus plebejus and found out that this could possibly be due to ovarian senescence in large (old) females.…”

“…These results were found to be less in comparison to that of M. macrobrachion in this study. The findings from this work showed that this species had low fecundity when compared with M. vollenhovenii from other works as reported by [15,33,34]. This might be due to the fact that M. vollenhovenii is larger than M. macrobrachion.…”

Reproductive biology and recruitment in an amphidromous prawn Macrobrachium australe in Reunion Island

“…In addition, maturity is also related to size in this genus. Females become mature at a larger size than males in M. völlenhoveni and in Macrobrachium amazonicum (Olele & Okonkwo ; Pantaleão et al. ).…”

“…However, the opposite can be observed (Bauer & Delahoussaye ). Moreover, size at maturity also differs between sexes in Macrobrachium (Mantel & Dudgeon ; Olele & Okonkwo ; Pantaleão et al. ).…”