C. Boglione et al., Skeletal descriptors and quality assessment in larvae and post-larvae of wild-caught and hatchery-reared gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata L. 1758), AQUACULTURE, 192(1), 2001, pp. 1-22
Gilthead sea bream from different Mediterranean hatcheries show a consisten
t number of skeletal anomalies, mainly in the hemal and caudal body regions
. Four hundred and twenty-two hatchery-reared sea bream from Italy, France
and Spain were checked for skeletal malformations and meristic counts. The
same skeletal descriptors were examined in 72 wild-caught sea bream. Corres
pondence analysis (CA) was performed to rank groups of hatchery-reared sea
bream according to their skeletal abnormalities. The position of each,group
on the first correspondence axis with respect to the wild-caught specimens
was used as a larval quality indicator. Wild phenotype similarity was also
tested performing meristic counts and intergroups meristic differences wer
e illustrated. Results highlighted a quality gap between wild-caught and ha
tchery-reared specimens, with the only exception being sea bream larvae tha
t were reared in semi-intensive conditions. This larval monitoring method i
s proposed as a tool for evaluating hatchery larval quality at a morpho-ana
tomical level. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.