Research on Mexican Native Shrimp
In an occasional series of projects Prof Lindsay Ross and Dr Carlos Martinez have worked on Mexican shrimp, both Penaeus and Macrobrachium.
Publications » Research on Crustacea
Gasca Leyva, J.F.E., Martinez Palacios, C.A. & Ross, L.G. 1991. The respiratory requirements of Macrobrachium acanthurus (Weigman) at different temperatures and salinities. Aquaculture. 93, 191-197.
Martinez-Palacios, C.A, Ross, L.G. and Valenzuela, L.J. 1996. The effects of temperature and body weight on the oxygen consumption of Penaeus vannamei, Boone, 1931. Journal of Aquaculture in the Tropics. 11: (1) 59-65.
Ponce-Palafox, J., Martinez-Palacios, C.A and Ross, L.G. 1997. The
effects of salinity and temperature on the growth and survival rates of juvenile white shrimp, Penaeus vannamei, Boone, 1931. Aquaculture.
157: 107-115.
Martinez-Palacios, C.A., Cabanillas Beltrán, H. Ponce-Palafox, J., Chávez Sánchez, Ma.C. and Ross, L.G. 2001. A modified chamber designed for estimation of digestibility in shrimp. North American Journal of Aquaculture. 63: 252-255.
Héctor Cabanillas Beltrán, Jesús T. Ponce-Palafox, Carlos A. Martínez Palacios, Ma. Cristina Chávez Sánchez and Lindsay G. Ross. 2001. Comparacion de la digestibilidad de dietas a base de harina de pescado y harina de soya en Litopenaeus vannamei Boone, 1931, utilizando diferentes temperaturas y salinidades de cultivo. Ciencias Marinas. 27: (4), 577-593.
Spanopoulos-Hernández, M., Martínez-Palacios, C.A., Ross, L.G., Rosas-Vázquez, C.,
Vanegas-Pérez, R.C. 2005. Effect of salinity and temperature on the oxygen consumption of juvenile shrimps Litopenaeus stylirostris (Stimpson, 1874).
Aquaculture. 244. 341-348.
Forthcoming:
Martínez-Palacios C. A.,Valencia-Betancourt I. R., Olvera-Novoa M. A., Abdo de la Parra I., Toledo-Cuevas E. M., Rios-Duran, M.G.,Campos-Mendoza A. and L.G.Ross. 2011. The use of Salicornia bigelovii meal as a substitute for fishmeal in diets for postlarvae of white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei, Boone 1931) and juveniles of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus, Linneaus, 1758), and the use of cholesterol to ameliorate saponin-induced toxicity.
Working with native Macrobrachium in Tzitzio, Michoacan
Tzitzio is a small town to the south west of Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico. It is the principal town of a large municipio and is situated at a lower altitude (about 1500m) where the temperatures are higher than on the altiplano. Tzitzio is at the head of the massive Rio Balsas system and there is seasonally good quantities of water in the rivers. However, the upper Balsas sytsem has been isolated for 50 years in terms of migratory species because of the construction of two massive dams on the system without any provision for migratory fish or crustaceans.
One affected species is the native freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium. Older inhabitants have confirmed that these animals used to be common in the rivers but that they have not been seen in the area for almost 50 years.
In September 2003 we collaborated with members of the municipio to collect juvenile native Macrobrachium from the main Rio Balsas system at Lazaro Cardenas, near the coast, and to transplant a substantial number into the upper Balsas system to determine whether or not they would survive and grow. A massive operation was undertaken in which a very large lorry was filled with oxygenated plastic bags of Macrobrachium postlarvae. The lorry brought the juveniles to Tzitzio in the cool of the night and the following day they were seeded into a number of potential areas in the upper system
By December, children were finding Macrobrachium in the rivers and streams, showing that the species can survive and grow well if arrangements can be made for them to bypass the dams.
We are currently conducting a GIS-based study to describe and assess the transplanting operation.
