Berried females and larvae in the wild

[KenCotigirl]

Mustafa this question is for you. Why do you think, that in scientific papers the researchers have not found berried females or larvae in the anchialine ponds. In my ten gallon anchialine 'pond' larvae and berried females never hide even though I have provided many hiding places in the coral rubble pile. Holthuis did not collect material but described provided material. Couret, Wong, Bailey-Brock, Brock did not find larvae or berried females. Neither, did Santos as recently as 2006. It seems to me that the lack of finding both led to the conclusion that they hide in the lava. I think this is a false conclusion that has lead to the 'requirement' of hiding places. I have found that my larvae are attracted to light not the other way around. So they do not hide in the lava. Berried females behavior is no different from the other shrimp. They just do not swim as well. They feed as aggressively as other shrimp when food is available. Looking at the collected material from Santos you will notice adults and juveniles. Therefor you cannot conclude that they are not as fecund in the wild. Could it be they just did not look hard enough? Time is money and field research time is limited.

My tanks are for pleasure not for breeding. I use coral now for aesthetics. They provide vertical surfaces to add interest. The breeding shows I am providing a good environment. Also allows me to add more tanks without having to buy more shrimp.

Ken P

[Mustafa]

Yes, researchers seem to not find any berried females in the wild. I've been in contact with Scott Santos for years and I can confirm that as of our last conversation (a few months ago) the situation has not changed. He has never seen any ovigerous females...and not even larvae. It is quite possible that they do breed mostly underground in the wild due to possible predators in the anchialine pools. I do notice that females are more likely to hide than most other shrimp, although they do swim around and walk around a lot, too. Hiding females is not unusual for shrimp, by the way, as all freshwater shrimp berried females tend to hide more than non-berried females and males. It is true that there aren't all that many researchers involved in Supershrimp research, so it is quite possible that there are females out there, but they just weren't noticed. Given that even in captivity only a fraction of the females is ovigerous at any given time, it's likely that such females in the wild (also constituting a fraction of the population) can easily be overlooked.

My tanks don't have any piles of rock at all. Some still have the non-functional sponge filters (from the times when I was still experimenting) in them...and some shrimp do hide under them. Other tanks have just a small PVC pipe. I'll have to experiment with not giving them any hiding opportunity at all and see if it makes a difference with breeding. Probably not....