Fecundity and fertility of Macrobrachium amazonicum (Crustacea, Decapoda) at a Brazilian Northeastern dam

Abstract

The freshwater shrimp Macrobrachium amazonicum, which has a large occurrence in South American rivers, has been brought to several Brazilian Northeastern dams 50 years ago and it has suffered an adaptation that is not completely cleared until now. For a better acquaintance with the reproduction of the specimens developed in this new environment, studies about fecundity, fertility and hatching rate have been made in a collected sample of 100 berried females from a dam of the State of Paraí­­ba. The minimum and maximum values of fecundity and fertility, obtained from animals with a length of 35 to 71 mm, were 148 and 1,128, and 29 and 1,063, respectively. The hatching rate for females 55 mm long, assumed here as medium sized, was high, reaching almost 70%. It was also verifyed that the fecundity, fertility, and hatching rates increase according to the size of the females.