Effects of Different Photoperiodic Regimes on the Body Mass, Behavioural and Stress Responses in Golden Mahseer, Tor putitora

Jyoti Chand,Arun Kalkhundiya,Pankaj Bhatt ,Bipin Chandra Pathak ,Mohammad Serajuddin

doi:10.18311/jeoh/2021/26276

Jyoti Chand, Arun Kalkhundiya + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.18311/jeoh/2021/26276

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Abstract

Golden mahseer, Tor putitora is a teleostean cold-water fish, known to occur in the rivers of Himalayas. Light affects the physiology of the fish. Therefore, the study was carried out to evaluate the effects of different photoperiodic regimes as environmental cues on the development of body mass, behavioural and stress responses in T. putitora . Fishes were exposed in the different photoperiodic regimes such as 8 hours light: 16 hours dark (8L:16D), 16 hours light 8 hours dark (16L:8D) and natural light condition. The body mass, cortisol and behavioural profiling were studied. Ethovision (XT-13) was used to record the different behavioural responses of the fish after the exposure to various photoperiodic regimes. The difference in the behavioural profiling and scoring was recorded in the different groups of the juveniles of the fish. Effects of light: dark skeletons such as 8 hours light: 16 hours dark (8L:16D), 16 hours light 8 hours dark (16L:8D) and natural light condition (Control) exhibited remarkable differences in the biomass enhancement in the juveniles of the fish (P<0.05). Maximum amount of cortisol (0.93± 0.08ng/ml) was recorded in the group of the fish exposed to 16L:8D compared to natural (0.78± 0.21ng/ml) and the group exposed to 8L:16D photoperiodic regime (0.69± 0.11ng/ml). A significant difference (P<0.05) in behavioural profiling of the fish exposed to green, red and natural colour was noticed, where velocity/swimming speed of the fish was most affected by the green light spectra. The significant difference in the behavioural profiling and scoring was recorded in the different groups of the juveniles of the fish.

Highlights

Environmental cues affect the physiological governing in fish during the timing of reproduction, circannual rhythmicity as well as behavioural imprinting in the brain
Photoperiod acts as a zeitgeber for the growth performance, maturation and behavioural imprinting in fish
The final average body mass of juvenile fish exposed to natural (12L:12D), short (8L:16D) and long (16L:8D) photoperiodic regime recorded were 0.1490±0.006g, 0.1592±0.002g and 0.1267±0.003g respectively while the specific growth rate of the fish under natural, short and long photoperiodic regime was 16%,15% and 12% respectively

Summary

Introduction

Environmental cues affect the physiological governing in fish during the timing of reproduction, circannual rhythmicity as well as behavioural imprinting in the brain. The study on the effects of different photoperiodic regimes on the organismal physiology was carried out by various researchers in fish (Kashyap et al, 2015; Imsland, et al, 1995; SILVA-GARCIA, 1996; Purchase et al, 2000; Ruchin, 2004; Rad et al, 2006; Taylor et al, 2006; Valenzuela et al, 2006; Bonnet et al, 2007; Askarian & Kousha, 2009; Lee et al, 2019)[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Fiszbein et al(2010)[13] studied the photoperiodic role to evaluate the behavioural profiling and reproductive events of the cichlid fish, Cichlasoma dimerus. Photoperiodic light intensities have been reported to play some roles in the enhancement of biomass and viability of juveniles of cultured Mexican cichlid fish, Cichlasoma beani (AragónFlores et al, 2017)[15].

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