Laboratory spawning of the purple snail &lt;i&gt;Plicopurpura pansa&lt;/i&gt; (Gastropoda: Muricidae)

Ludwig C Naegel

doi:10.15517/rbt.v52i1.14702

Abstract

The spawning of the muricid gastropod Plicopurpura pansa in the laboratory at 22-23 degrees C is described. Females deposited 1-20 capsules daily for at least 20 weeks, and produced up to 150 capsules each per spawning season. During spawning, egg clusters were formed consisting of hundreds of capsules of different ages deposited by different females. Each egg capsule contained an average of 436 embryos (+/- s.d. 213.6, range: 95-1092, n=50). Embryos developed without nurse eggs. After six to eight weeks of intracapsular, lecithotrophic development, planktotrophic veligers hatched with two fully developed velar lobes.

Highlights

The purple snail, Plicopurpura pansa (Gould, 1853), is a predator that inhabits the high intertidal of rocky shores exposed to the open sea with high impact waves
At what age and size do P. pansa reach sexual maturity and reproduces in nature? When is the reproductive season in Baja California Sur? Is there more than one reproductive season per year? How many egg capsules with how many eggs are laid per spawning season and how is the intracapsular development? Such biological information is necessary for the development of techniques for re-stocking natural populations, and possibly enabling them to recover, or at least buffer this threatened species from the effects of over exploitation
Purple snails were collected between October and December, and the first egg capsules were laid in the laboratory February in the laboratory

Summary

Introduction

The purple snail, Plicopurpura pansa (Gould, 1853), is a predator that inhabits the high intertidal of rocky shores exposed to the open sea with high impact waves. The tradition of dying material with the colorant of the purple snail has survived only in remote Pacific regions of Mexico (in the States of Oaxaca and Michoacan) and with the indigenous community of the Borucas in Costa Rica (Turok 1999). These practices represent the survival of knowledge of considerable antiquity and it is feared that this old tradition will be lost in the near future (Thompson 1994). This study, which describes the spawning of P. pansa in captivity, is the first step towards understanding the reproduction of P. pansa

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