出版社：Government of Western Australia / Department of Fisheries
摘要：This study was primarily aimed at gaining insight into mate choice of western rock lobsters in the
wild to assist in addressing the question of whether there are sufficient mature and particularly
large sized males, to mate with the females in the population. This has been of concern in this
fishery because current management rules protect all mature females whilst they are in a breeding
state and large size females even in a non-breeding state, but there are no management measures
to protect large males. Sampling was conducted periodically on a deep (50 m) offshore reef
near the centre of the fishery, between October 2004 and August 2006. Microsatellite paternity
assignment tests were used to determine which males caught in pots on the site had mated with
females (either deposited a spermatophore, or fertilised eggs) at the sampling site. Only six
of the 284 sampled male lobster had mated with females caught over the same period. Four of
these identified males had mated with only one sampled female, while the other two males had
mated with three different females each. Multiple spermatophore samples matched each other
but did not match any tissue samples from males captured during the surveys. From the small
number of male lobsters that were both sampled and that had fertilised females at the sampling
site, choice of mating partner appeared to be random. Similarly, although the sample size was
small, there appeared to be no relationship between size of the male lobster and number of
females that he mated. As a secondary output from this study, a total of nine male and three
female lobsters were identified by the microsatellite analysis as being recaptured after moulting.
These animals have provided intermoult increment (growth) data.
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