Artemia: A Survey of Its Significance in Genetic Problems

Abstract

Artemia is a genus belonging to Branchiopoda Anostraca (Crustacea). Until recently this genus was considered to be comprised of a single species, Artemia salina, while now at least three specific entities are known. Artemia, commonly called the brine shrimp for its natural habitat, which is salt ponds (e.g., in African cases), salt lakes (e.g., the Great Salt Lake), and salterns of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, is geographically widely spread, and lives gregariously. The brine shrimp can stand drought while in the embryo stage, protected by a shell—i.e., in the cyst stage, commonly referred to as the egg or permanent egg. Growing Artemia in the laboratory is now an easy task; it may be fed on yeast or, with much better results, on green unicellular algae, such as Dunaliella (Ballardin and Metalli, 1963). The life cycle (from the egg or the larva laid viviparously) includes, on the average, 4–5 weeks for the attainment of sexual maturity. The number of offspring produced by a single female, although varying widely, may reach 200–300. The biology of Artemia is characterized by two phenomena: parthenogenesis and polyploidy. The latter is especially interesting because it is rare among animals; both facts were established by the classic investigations of Brauer (1893) and of Artom (1906, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1921, 1924, 1931).