Fecundity, fertility and hatching rate of Macrobrachium birai Lobão, Melo & Fernandes and Macrobrachium petronioi Melo, Lobão & Fernandes (Decapoda, Palaemonidae) of the Branco River (Cananéia í SP)

Abstract

The values of fecundity, fertility and hatching rate correlated with the ovigerous females length and weight were estimated from M. birai and M. petronioi collected in Branco River (Cananéia - SP), Brazil. The extreme variation values to fecundity of M. birai females were of 1,062 to 4,757 eggs with the variation of length of 2.85 cm to 6.00 cm and 0.291 g to 3.892 g, respectively. For M. petronioi this extremes variations were of 19 to 80 eggs, with the animal presenting size variation of 2.90 cm to 4.50 cm and 0.341 g to 1.720 g, respectively. For fertility of M. birai, these variations were 819 to 7,599 larvae with size change of 4.25 cm to 6.65 cm and 1.17 g to 5.39 g, and hatching rate average of 67.51% for an average length of 5.16 cm and 63.08% for average weight of 2.41 g. For M. petronioi the variation extremes of fertility were 12 to 75 larvae with size variation of 3.1 cm to 4.5 cm and 0.48 g to 1.14 g, and hatching rate average of 78.47% for an average length of 3.67 cm and 72.92% for an average weight of 0.77 g. The analysis showed that the fecundity and the fertility obtained for both species increased with the size of the females that they fitted a linear model mainly for M. birai.