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Fate of glair glands and spawning behaviour in unmated crayfish: a comparison between gonochoristic slough crayfish and parthenogenetic marbled crayfish

Günter Vogt
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/047654
Günter Vogt
Faculty of Biosciences, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 230, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; E-mail:
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  • For correspondence: gunter.vogt@web.de
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Abstract

In the period before spawning, freshwater crayfish females develop glair glands on the underside of the pleon. These glands produce the mucus for a transient tent-like structure in which the eggs are fertilized and attached to the pleopods. Long-term observation of females of the bisexually reproducing slough crayfish, Procambarus fallax, kept in captivity revealed that glair glands developed in late winter and late summer of each year independent of the presence of males. However, in contrast to mated females unmated females did neither form a fertilization tent nor spawn. Their glair glands persisted for an unusually long period of time and disappeared only during the next moult. Apparently, females use information on sperm availability to either reproduce or save the resources. Marbled crayfish, Procambarus virginalis, a parthenogenetic descendant of slough crayfish, developed glair glands in approximately the same periods of the year but spawned despite of the absence of mating. These findings indicate that on their way from gonochorism to parthenogenesis regulation of glair gland activity and spawning has been decoupled from mating. Therefore, the species pair Procambarus fallax/Procambarus virginalis seems to be particularly suitable to investigate the physiological, molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying spawning in freshwater crayfish.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 08, 2016.
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Fate of glair glands and spawning behaviour in unmated crayfish: a comparison between gonochoristic slough crayfish and parthenogenetic marbled crayfish
Günter Vogt
bioRxiv 047654; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/047654
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Fate of glair glands and spawning behaviour in unmated crayfish: a comparison between gonochoristic slough crayfish and parthenogenetic marbled crayfish
Günter Vogt
bioRxiv 047654; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/047654

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