Heritability estimations of ammonia tolerance and survival of ridgetail white prawn Exopalaemon carinicauda

Ridgetail white prawn Exopalaemon carinicauda is an important economic marine species in China. To improve the germplasm quality of cultured E. carinicauda, for the first time, we estimated the heritability of ammonia tolerance and survival of E. carinicauda, covering 263 full-sib families in multiple generations. Analysis models including binary linear animal model (BLA), binary linear sire-dam model (BLSD), probit threshold animal model (PTA), and probit threshold sire-dam model (PTSD) were used. The estimated heritability of tolerance to ammonia in different models ranged from 0.09 to 0.22, and that of survival rate ranged from 0.06 to 0.16. Concerning the tolerance to ammonia, both the PTSD and BLSD models showed comparatively better prediction accuracies (0.48 and 0.47, respectively) than PTA and BLA models (0.40 and 0.26, respectively), while to the survival rate, all four models presented relatively low predictive abilities (0.16–0.26). This study provided important information for the future breeding program of E. carinicauda.