Some reproductive aspects of Latreutes Fucorum (Fabricius, 1798) (Decapoda, Hippolytidae) from Bahía de la Ascensión, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Latreutes fucorum (Fabricius, 1798) has a distribution that includes the American Atlantic coast from Canada to Brazil and part of the Antilles, as well as the Azores Islands and Cape Verde in the eastern Atlantic; however, there is little published information on the reproduction of this species. The aim of this study is to provide data on some reproductive characteristics of L. fucorum as fecundity, egg volume, sex ratio, and size at sexual maturity (CL50). The shrimps were collected on Thalassia testudinum Banks & Solander ex König meadows in Bahía de la Ascensión, Quintana Roo, Mexico during May 2002 by means of a Coleman-Seagrove sledge net with 800 μm mesh opening. We analysed 1097 specimens, from which was obtained a sex ratio of 1.59 males per female. The size interval of ovigerous females was 1.80 to 3.88 mm cephalothoracic length (CL), and we estimated a size at sexual maturity in the population of 2.55 ± 0.79 mm CL. Average fecundity was 96.25 ± 53.16, with 25 eggs as minimum and a maximum of 323, with a correlation coefficient of 0.72 between cephalothorax length and fecundity. Average egg volume varied from 0.013 mm3 in the first stage of development to 0.025 mm3 in embryos near hatching, which represents an increase of 92.3%. This is the first study about reproductive characteristics of L. fucorum for the Atlantic coast of Mexico. spa