a comparison of survival, growth in artemia populations from turkey and iran in laboratory conditions

brine shrimp artemia, is a small crustacean which is found naturally in salt lakes and lagoons. sofar several bisexual and parthenogenetic artemia populations have been reported which have different phenotypic and genotypic characters. the biological properties of some populations has not been studied yet. regarding that the populations of turkey have not been characterized so far, in present study growth and survival rates of 6 and 5 artemia populations from turkey and iran, have been compared under similar laboratory conditions. the artemia were reared at salinity of 80 g/l and fed with a mixture of the alga, dunaliella tertiolecta and enriched yeast with for fatty acids-for 15 days. survival and total length of the artemia were measured on days 3,7,11 and 15 of culture. maximum (82%) and minimum (51%) survival were found for zanbil and camalti while maximum (8.93±1.61) and minimum (6.8±0.95) growth rates were for a. urmiana and qom, respectively. this study also reveled of being different artemia populations among the studied groups.