Effects of non-circadian light/dark cycles on the growth and moulting ofPalaemon elegansreared in the laboratory

✍ Scribed by R. Dalley

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 771 KB
• Volume: 56
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0025-3162
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00390596

✦ Synopsis

The growth and moulting of PaIaemon elegans Rathke has been compared under a circadian (12 h light:12 h dark) and two non-circadian (8 h light:8 h dark and random light:dark) light/dark cycles. In prawns reared individually from hatching to the late juvenile phase, growth, measured as increase in total length, was significantly retarded in the non-circadian regimes, during zoeal, post-larval and early juvenile development. This effect was primarily the result of reduced increments at moulting in the non-circadian regimes. Growth of prawns reared from hatching to the post-larval phase, measured as wet and dry weights, was similarly reduced in a non-circadian regime. These effects support the hypothesis that the integrity of an animal's physiology is partially dependent on maintaining, through the action of daily environmental cycles, correct timing relationships between its oscillating sub-systems.