Vol. 38 No. 4, 1999

Progesterone-like Substance in Ovary and Hepatopancreas of Uca vocans borealis

Jin-Taur Shih* and Su-Shyan Tseng

Department of Biology, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan 116

Jin-Taur Shih and Su-Shyan Tseng (1999) We study the temporal variation in amount of progesteronelike substance in tissues of the fiddler crab, Uca vocans borealis. Both HPLC and radioimmunoassay (RIA) were employed to determine the amount of a progesterone-like substance in extracts of ovary and hepatopancreas. The results show that, during the breeding period (egg-carrying, January-September), the progesterone-like substance concentrations in ovaries and in hepatopancreases of the crabs studied were 13.8-29.3 and 7.7- 17.2 ng per gram of tissue, respectively; while the values dropped to 1.0-2.1 and 4.8-6.8 ng per gram of tissue, respectively, during the nonbreeding period (non-egg-carrying, October-December).

Key words: Crab, Ovary, Hepatopancreas, Progesterone-like substance.

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