STUDY ON THE ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION AND EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT OF PANULIRUS ORNATUS

Panulirus ornatus is one of the most valuable seafood commodities in the world. This species is also the largest tropical lobster for fisheries and culture in China. But now the natural resources of P. ornatus is shortage, and culture from egg through the larval phase to puerulus has not been completed. Hence, the research for artificial breeding to protect the proliferation and resources is needed. In this paper, the artificial propagation of 26 months old cultured Panulirus ornatus and development of the embryos were studied. The results showed that the cultured P. ornatus could breed twice in five months. The ovarian maturation can be accelerated by ablating the unilateral eyestalk. During the first and second brooding, the ovarian maturation time of the eyestalk-ablated females was shortened by 17.7 d and 11.3 d, respectively, comparing with the control group. The females spawn 1–10 days post mating. During the first and second brood, the numbers of eggs per female produced were average of 40.34 × 104 and 32.97 × 104 with mean hatch rates of 77.29% and 77.72%, and average 31.70 × 104 and 25.38 × 104 phyllosoma were successfully hatched, respectively. The embryos developed for 22–23 d at water temperature of 29.2 and salinity of 30. The process of embryonic ℃ development could be divided into eleven stages: fertilized eggs, cleavage stage, blastula stage, gastrula stage, egg-nauplius stage, embryo with 7 pairs of appendages, embryo with 9 pairs of appendages, embryo with 11 pairs of appendages, embryo with compound eye pigments formed, pre-hatching stage and hatching stage．