Individual growth of white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei (Boone, 1931) and blue shrimp L. stylirostris (Stimpson, 1874) (Crustacea: Penaeidae) by multi-model approach

Abstract

Individual growth of two shrimp species of the family Penaeidae, the white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei and blue shrimp L. stylirostris were analyzed. The hypothesis was that both species would have an asymptotic growth type with sigmoid shape. The data comes from shrimp farming in earthen ponds of an aquaculture farm located in the Gulf of California, density was 25 post-larvae m-2 in ponds of 1.8 ha. Three asymptotic models were applied to averaged length at age data: von Bertalanffy, Gompertz, and logistic. The model’s parameters were computed by maximum likelihood criterion. Best model was selected according to the Akaike information criterion. The final total length of white shrimp was 128.8 mm and the estimated asymptotic length was 130 mm, after 140 rearing days. The blue shrimp final size was 142.2 mm, and the asymptotic length was 174 mm, after 158 rearing days. For both species, the model which better described the growth was the Gompertz model; consequently the conclusion was that the growth of both species must be sigmoid shape.