Influence of lipid‐enriched diets on the reproductive performance of marine ornamental ‘hinge‐beak’ shrimp Rhynchocinetes durbanensis (Caridea: Rhynchocinetidae)

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the efficiency of lipid-enriched brood stock diets on the reproductive performance, such as fecundity, egg volume, fatty acid profile of newly extruded (stage 1) embryos and the starvation threshold of the newly hatched larvae of the marine ornamental ‘hinge-beak’ shrimp Rhynchocinetes durbanensis Gordon. Three dietary treatments (50, 100 and 150 g/kg lipids) were formulated to understand their influence on the reproduction of R. durbanensis under captive condition and compared with the wild-caught shrimps carrying embryos in the abdomen. The reproductive parameters varied significantly between the treatments (captive and wild). Further, the fatty acid profile revealed that essential fatty acid levels of newly extruded embryos in the wild collected shrimps were almost like that of embryos produced in 100 and 150 g/kg of lipid-enriched diets. The results of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) suggest that the fatty acid profile of embryos has confirmed the separation of four centroids indicating comprehensive differences among the embryos of captive-reared and wild-caught shrimps. Hence, it is recommended that the commercial diets formulated with essential nutrients would play a major role in enhancing the reproductive performance of marine ornamental shrimps.