Zusammenfassung: Age-classes in crayfish populations can be determined from size-frequency data provided 4 tents are adhered to only crayfish collected from areas of rock substrate are used; trapping are excluded; species do not have longevities exceeding about 4 yr; and most importantly, sample sizes are greater than about 200. Studies that have failed to follow these guidelines have met with limited success in dissecting mixed frequency distributions. Further, 3 validation procedures must be undertaken: temporal replication within molting events to measure the precision of both data collection and size-frequency analysis; corroboration with known-age crayfish from either field recaptures or laboratory molt increments; and concordance with independent analysis of the mean size at onset of sexual maturity. When these checks support the size-frequency results, population age composition and analyses of rates of growth or mortality can be considered reliable.

Zusammenfassung: The software “BHATTA”, achieved in Turbo Pascal on IBM PC makes possible histogram analysis for population structure. The base of the study is an analysis of population dynamics from histograms of size frequency. The program “BHATTA”, made from the method of logarithmic differences of Bhattacharya, cuts the histograms in order to display Gaussian components and to estimate the parameters: number (size of sample), mean and standard deviation for each generation or cohort to determine growth curves for each cohort.