Allometric Growth Patterns and Morphological Development of the Common Bream (Abramis brama) During Early Development Under Cultural Condition

Inroduction & Early development and allometric growth pattern is an important feature during early development of fishes that are related to their priorities for increasing survival and adaptation to environmental factors. Hence, this research was conducted to study the allometric growth patterns and morphological development of common bream (Abramis brama) during its early development from hatching upto 60 days post hatching (dph)under cultural condition.
For this purpose common bream larvae were reared for two months until fingerling stage. The larvae were sampled from hatching upto 60 day post hatching (dph). Then Morphometric parameters obtained from 2D pictures of specimens using the software ImageJ and allometric growth pattern was calculated as a power function of total length using non-transformed data: Y=axb.
The results showed that the early development of this species can be divided into four stages based on their allometric growth patterns and development of morphological characteristics. Stage I or larval stage is occurred from hatching upto 6 dph and during this stage, the inflexion points of the tail length and head and body depths are occurred at 5 and 6 dph, respectively. Second developmental stage or the post larval stage (6-18 dph), includes inflexion points of the total weight at 11dph, head length and eye diameter at 14dph and, the caudal peduncle depth at 18 dph. Stages III or per-juvenile stage (18-35 dph) consists the inflexion points of the snout and trunk lengths at 25 and 35 dph, respectively. Forth developmental stage is started from 35 dph upward and at this stage fish is obtained the miniature shape of its adult.
The results revealed that priorities of the common bream during early developmental stages include development of the swimming ability, respiration structures, and sense organssituated in the head region and then feeding apparatus that may be in agreement with its ecological shifts during its ontogeny.