Use of lipofuscin for resolving cohorts of western rock lobster (Panulirus cygnus)

Abstract

We evaluated lipofuscin age pigment as an approach to age determination of western rock lobster (Panulirus cygnus). Lipofuscin was measured using fluorescence image analysis of olfactory lobe sections from 184 juvenile lobsters from coastal nursery reefs at Seven Mile Beach, Western Australia. Modal analysis of a lipofuscin concentration-frequency histogram for this sample suggested the presence of additional age-classes, not apparent in conventional size-frequency distributions but expected to be present from earlier tag-recapture studies. Modal progression suggested a remarkably constant average lipofuscin accumulation rate of 0.31% by volume per year in the wild lobsters, which was supported by blind-trial measurements of lipofuscin in known-age laboratory-reared specimens. Lipofuscin-based age estimates, indicating that most juvenile lobsters are 3-5 years old immediately prior to recruitment to the fishery at 76 mm carapace length, agree with the long-established relationship between puerulus settlement and lobster catch 3-4 years later. Results indicate that the lipofuscin ageing technique will permit independent assessment of current population parameter estimates and be useful for determining sexual and regional differences in these for the western rock lobster.

Survivorship of juvenile surf clams Donax serra (Bivalvia, Donacidae) exposed to severe hypoxia and hydrogen sulphide

“…Donato and Sohal, 1978;Moore et al, 1980;Bassin et al, 1982; 0022-0981/02/$ -see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 2 2 -0 9 8 1 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 2 4 0 -X Sheehy, 1989;Mathew and Damodaran, 1997;Sheehy et al, 1998;Bluhm et al, 2001a). The rate of lipofuscin formation is assumed to depend mainly on cellular oxygen consumption (Sohal, 1981;Zs-Nagy, 1988;Katz et al, 1984).…”

Occurrence of the autofluorescent pigment, lipofuscin, in polar crustaceans and its potential as an age marker

“…Lipofuscin concentrations were very low and granules were inconspicuous, as also observed by Sheehy (1990a) and in Cherax quadrinatus during the initial months. As in this study, Sheehy (1990b), O'Donovan and Tully (1996) and Sheehy et al (1998) observed linear accumulation in juveniles but cautioned against extrapolation of this pattern to total life span. Sheehy (1992) and , however, observed apparently decelerating accumulation with advancing age.…”

“…In decapods, the (posterior) lateral somacluster of the olfactory lobe was localised (nomenclature after Sandeman et al 1992); this is composed of cell bodies of ascending olfactory projection neurons (Schmidt and Harzsch 1999). Lipofuscin has proven to be especially dense in this area in decapod crustaceans (Sheehy 1989(Sheehy , 1990bSheehy et al 1995Sheehy et al , 1998. In amphipods, we identi®ed regions of high lipofuscin density, so far not described in the literature, and afterwards used them for analysis.…”

“…The author concluded that the histologically based quantitative method with concurrent visual microscopic veri®cation of in situ morphological lipofuscin's¯uorescence and histochemical attributes is the only reliable method for quanti®cation. Several recent studies have been attempted to assess the applicability of morphological lipofuscin as an age marker (O'Donovan and Tully 1996; Belchier et al 1998;Sheehy et al 1998). Besides E. superba (Sheehy 1990a), no other species from high latitudes has been studied until now.…”

Evidence of lipofuscin accumulation in the deep-water red shrimp Aristaeomorpha foliacea (Risso, 1827)

“…Despite the heterogeneous composition and genesis of lipofuscin, its relationship with aging has been demonstrated in many groups of crustaceans such as krill (NICOL et al, 1991), amphipods (BLUHM et al, 2001), clawed (O'DONOVAN & TULLY, 1996SHEEHY et al, 1996;WAHLE et al, 1996;SHEEHY et al, 1999;CASTRO et al, 2002;) and spiny lobsters (SHEEHY et al, 1998), crayfish (SHEEHY, 1990a;SHEEHY et al, 1994;BELCHIER et al, 1998) and shrimps, both caught in the wild or raised in aquaculture (SHEEHY et al, 1995;VILA et al, 2000;MEDINA et al, 2000;SOBRINO et al, 2001;PEIXOTO et al, 2002;VILA GORDILLO, 2005). These studies, based also on animals kept in controlled conditions, allowed the improvement of extraction and methods of analysis, as well as the confirmation that, regardless the sex, lipo- Medit.…”