Artemia populations (Mura & Nagorskaya, 2005)

Zheng, Bo & Sun, Shi-chun, 2023, Morphology and biometry of two Chinese diploid parthenogenetic Artemia populations with a special emphasis on the gonopods and frontal knobs of rare males, Zoologischer Anzeiger 303, pp. 80-89 : 81

2.1. Artemia populations and culture conditions

Two parthenogenetic populations (GH and CK-par) and six bisexual populations (SIN, LGC, URM, SFB, PER, and SAL) representing a variety of bisexual species were cultured and their morphological characters were surveyed, and the surveyed data were combined with frontal knob data of another six bisexual populations from previous studies ( Table 1). Eggs of SIN, URM, SFB and PER were provided by Professor Gilbert Van Stappen and Professor Patrick Sorgeloos. Eggs of SAL were provided by the late Professor Graziella Mura. Eggs of other populations were from the Institute of Evolution and Marine Biodiversity, Ocean University of China.

All populations were raised under standard conditions to minimize the effect of environmental factors on the body forms of the cultured Artemia ( Hontoria & Amat 1992) . Resting eggs were hatched in 30 psu seawater at 25 ◦ C ( Van Stappen 1996). According to Zheng et al. (2004) and Zheng & Sun (2008), animals were cultured at 73 psu salinity. All populations were cultured at 25 ◦ C except the high altitude LGC population ( A. tibetiana ), which was cultured at 20 ◦ C ( Abatzopoulos et al., 2002; Baxevanis et al., 2005). Light intensity was about 1500 lx with a 12 h L/12 h D photoperiod. Fresh Dunaliella salina Teodoresco was provided as food once per day.