Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is a widely used tool for sound detection and assessing behavior of various aquatic species. Crustaceans have different mechanisms for emitting sounds, usually associated with specific situations or behaviors. The sound emission in shrimp occurs by the collision of their mandibles during food ingestion, generating a "click" sound that allows the association with the feeding activity. Therefore, PAM has been used to develop automated feeders in commercial farming, as well as represents a non-invasive alternative for studying shrimp feeding behavior in laboratory conditions. This presentation reviews the applications of PAM for evaluating shrimp feeding behavior in the laboratory, as well as introducing general concepts, terms and methodologies used in bioacoustics. Among the main contributions of PAM in laboratory studies with shrimp, the following can be highlighted: the acoustic characterization of clicks and mandibular structure associated with their emission for different species; detecting variations in acoustic parameters of clicks according to animal size and molt cycle, texture and size of feed pellets; and analyzing the effects on feeding behavior caused by shrimp size, stocking density and specific diet characteristics (texture, formulations, additives and pellet sizes). The PAM is an efficient ethological methodology to help improving our knowledge on the shrimp feeding behavior in laboratory conditions.
Keywords: bioacoustics; ethology; crustaceans; clicks; ecdysis; feeding frequency.