Reproductive potential of four freshwater prawn species in the Amazon region

Abstract

The bioecology of freshwater prawns can be understood by studying their reproductive biology. Thus, the aim of this paper was to determine and compare the reproductive potential of four freshwater caridean prawns collected in the Amazon region. For two years, we captured females of Macrobrachium brasiliense, Palaemon carteri, Pseudopalaemon chryseus and Euryrhynchus amazoniensis from inland streams in the municipality of Itacoatiara (AM). At the laboratory, we measured the biometric variables total length, carapace length, abdomen length and total weight, and recorded the number of eggs (NE) by direct counting. There was a significant difference for all variables between the species. The females of M. brasiliense were the most abundant and had the largest sizes and NE. However, the fecundity index shows that P. carteri has the highest reproductive potential of the four species. Despite the differences in size and weight, all the species showed low fecundity, which is a characteristic of continental palemonidean K strategist prawns.

Male morphotypes of the freshwater prawn Macrobrachium brasiliense (Decapoda: Caridea: Palaemonidae)

“…Most studies of M. brasiliense addressed its population ecology (García‐Davílla, Alcantara, Vasquez, & Chujandama, ; Mantelatto & Barbosa, ; Oliveira, Sant'anna, & Hattori, ), and there are few published distribution records (García‐Davílla & Magalhães, ; Santos, Castro, & Magalhães, ). Despite the species' wide distribution, there have been few taxonomic reviews (Coelho & Ramos‐Porto, ; Pileggi & Mantelatto, ) and few studies of other aspects of the species' biology such as behavior (Nogueira, Costa, & Almeida, ), feeding behavior (Melo & Nakagaki, ), mass‐length relationships or other measures of physiological condition (Taddei et al, ), reproductive potential (Oliveira, Sant'anna, & Hattori, ), or larval morphology (Pantaleão, Gregatti, Taddei, & Costa, ).…”

“…. Despite the species' wide distribution, there have been few taxonomic reviews (Coelho & Ramos-Porto, 1984;Pileggi & Mantelatto, 2012) and few studies of other aspects of the species' biology such as behavior (Nogueira, Costa, & Almeida, 2018), feeding behavior (Melo & Nakagaki, 2013), mass-length relationships or other measures of physiological condition (Taddei et al, 2017), reproductive potential (Oliveira, Sant'anna, & Hattori, 2017), or larval morphology (Pantaleão, Gregatti, Taddei, & Costa, 2011).…”

Relative growth and population dynamics of Macrobrachium iheringi (Decapoda, Palaemonidae)

“…When compared to other species of Macrobrachium that have abbreviated larval development, we observe similar results: M. brasiliense has on average 33 eggs per female, with fecundity varying between 8 and 116 eggs, and in M. potiuna, fecundity is 35 eggs on average and ranges from 19 to 65 eggs. In addition, for M. iheringi, egg size was similar to those of M. potiuna, which were 1.41 mm wide and 2.17 mm long (Nazari et al, 2003;Oliveira et al, 2017). Even though the fecundity of M. iheringi was twice that of M. brasiliense and M. potiuna; however, it can still be considered low and similar to other Macrobrachium species with abbreviated larval cycle, considering that species with extended larval cycle can carry 1,500 eggs on average, as observed in M. olfersii and M. amazonicum (Nazari et al, 2003;Silva et al, 2004).…”

“…Regarding fecundity, M. iheringi had a lower amount of eggs but they were larger than in other species of the genus (e.g., M. potiuna (Müller, 1880) and M. brasiliense) (Nazari et al, 2003;Oliveira et al, 2017), reflecting the reproductive strategy of this species. As M. iheringi has an abbreviated larval cycle, the larval development occurs mostly inside the eggs and larvae hatch in an advanced stage (Bueno & Rodrigues, 1995;Magalhães & Walker, 1988).…”