Nutrition, digestion et développement des larves de crevettes et poissons marins

This report is presented by Chantal Cahu for obtaining accreditation to supervise research. Since 1981, her research activity has addressed the study of reproducers' nutrition and the young stages of development of marine organisms belonging to two different branch lines, crustaceans and fish. This work, performed in a base-lined research body, IFREMER, is placed within a more general programme of aquaculture development. Indeed, whatever species are at issue, the development of aquaculture in France, as at the global level, is based on the production of juveniles in hatcheries. My work has therefore more precisely the goal of acquiring knowledge about the nutritional needs, mechanisms of digestion and the development of these animals in order to improve the production of prawn post-larvae and fish alevin in the hatchery. This work took place in three main periods that appear in this report: - The study of reproducers' nutrition and its influence on the quality of the Penaeid prawn's eggs and larvae. My work has focused mainly on the effect of lipids and vitamins on the development of eggs and larvae. - The study of the ontogenesis of the digestive functions and the nutritional needs of sea fish larvae, with bass as the model. The goal was to determine the specific nutritional needs of the young stages by studying the implementation and regulation of pancreatic and intestinal digestive enzymes. - The study of the regulation of certain developmental genes by means of nutrients, so as to understand how these nutrients behave during ontogenesis, particularly during development of the skeleton.