Thirty-two eggs of Pantanal caiman (Caiman crocodilus yacare) (Daudin, 1802) were incubated at 30° C. After 20 days of incubation at 30° C, the remaining eggs were distributed in the following way: seven at 34° C, seven at 32° C, six at 30° C and six at 28° C. At 32° C and 34° C a 100% hatchability was obtained while at 30° C 83.3% and at 28° C 66.6%. After hatching, the animals were kept for 120 days at the same temperature of their final incubation. Weight (g) control and morphometric (cm) analysis were carried out. The statistic design was totally randomized and the data were treated by regression analysis showing a quadratic behavior ( p<0.05). It was found that weight, total length (TTL), tail length (TL), snout- vent length (SVL), head length (HL), eye length (EL), snout length (SL), mid-point snout width (MSW), head width (HW), width of snout at nostrils (NW), distance between limbs (DBL) showed a higher development at the temperature range from 31.2° C to 31.8° C and circumference of belly at 30.0° C.
Caiman; development; incubation; temperature; thermic variation
