Reproductive and brood cycles of Artemia persimilis Piccinelli & Prosdocimi from Colorada Chica Lake (Province of La Pampa,República Argentina), under laboratory conditions

The brood cycle in anostracans results from the overlapping of two successive reproductive cycles in the genital tract of females. While a clutch of oocytes begins to mature at the ovaries (ovarian period), the nauplii, cysts or unfertilised products of a previous clutch are developing in the ovisac or being released to the medium (oviduct-ovisac period). Models are proposed for the sequence of stages and their duration in a complete brood cycle under two treatments, i.e., females with males (1:1 ratio), and isolated virginal females of Artemia persimilis in laboratory conditions. The whole brood cycle in both treatments took 6 days, however, they differed in the duration of some stages. The differences are discussed and observations on amplexus are added.