Acoustic feeding responses using marine chemoattractants in plant-based diets for naive and non-naive Litopenaeus vannamei

The inclusion of chemoattractants has been investigated to improve the attractability and palatability of plant-based shrimp diets. A more recent approach utilizes passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) to record the sounds (clicks) emitted by shrimp during feeding activity allowing the identification of behavioral responses related to the diets. In the present study we automatically identified click signals in PAM recordings at sampling frequency of 192 kHz. This methodology was applied to evaluate the efficiency of three chemoattractants (krill meal, squid meal and fish hydrolysate) added to a basal all-plant diet on the acoustic feeding behavior and food consumption of naive (without acclimation) and non-naive (acclimated to the diets) Litopenaeus vannamei. Five diets were used: basal all-plant diet (AP, negative control) and its modifications to contain 20 g/Kg of krill meal (AP+KM), 20 g/Kg of squid meal (AP+SM) and 40 g/Kg of fish hydrolysate (AP+FH); a diet with 120 g/Kg fishmeal (FM) was used as a positive control. Ten shrimp (6.8 ± 0.6 g; mean ± SD) were stocked per aquarium (70 L) in a clear water recirculation system (30 aquaria, five diets with six replicates). The food consumption and acoustic activity were evaluated simultaneously in each aquarium over a 30-min period during two consecutive days for each trial, naive and non-naive shrimp. Strong positive relationships (r = 0.78–0.81; P < 0.001) were found between food consumption and total number of clicks emitted by naive and non-naive shrimp. Overall, the inclusion of the chemoattractants to the plant-based diet had a positive effect improving acoustic feeding behavior and food consumption for naive and non-naive L. vannamei. In particular, the response of non-naive shrimp to chemoattractants was markedly increased, and the highest clicking activity was attained by using krill meal (AP+KM), followed by fish hydrolysate (AP+FH). The new analytical method proved to be a useful alternative approach for studying shrimp feeding behavior, also indicating the potential of PAM to forecast feed intake and improve efficiency of feed management.