New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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Growth and survival of early juvenile trumulco snail Chorus giganteus (Gastropoda: Muricidae) fed two prey species

C. S. Gallardo
M. A. Diaz

Instituto de Zoología E. F. Kilian
Universidad Austral de Chile
Casilla 567
Valdivia, Chile
email: cgallard@uach.cl

C. Varela

Departamento de Acuicultura
Universidad De Los Lagos
Osorno, Chile

Abstract  Comparative data were obtained on the growth and survival of early juveniles of the trumulco snail Chorus giganteus from settlement to an age of 4 months when fed either of the mussel species Semimytilus algosus or Perumytilus purpuratus. Growth of the snails after 4 months was significantly greater when fed S. algosus, ending with a mean size of 6162 µm compared with 5192 µm with P. purpuratus. Survival between the two fed groups was not prey-specific. Survival of the unfed control group was significantly lower beginning at 14 days post-metamorphosis. After 63 days, survival within the fed groups was 63.2% and only 16.5% in the unfed control group. The similarity of growth and survival of these juveniles during the first 2 months in culture suggested that both prey species had the same food value. The energy cost to the snails of penetrating the different prey species diverged after the second month, as the shells of P. purpuratus became thicker and thus more difficult to penetrate than those of S. algosus. This was reflected as differences in growth rates for snails fed the 2 species in the following 2 months of the experiment. Unfed snails grew by 107 µm in average during the first 2 weeks of the experiment and then ceased demonstrating the importance of nutritional reserves carried by the larva from hatching through early benthic survival.

Keywords   Chorus giganteus; growth; survival; juveniles; food value; ingestive conditioning

M03038; Online publication date 24 November 2004 Received 16 July 2003; accepted 2 August 2004
New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 2004, Vol. 38: 767–773
0028–8330/04/3805–0767 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2004

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