Alternative reproductive tactics increase effective population size and decrease inbreeding in wild Atlantic salmon

• Published in: Evolutionary Applications
• Main Authors: Perrier, Charles, Normandeau, Eric, Dionne, Melanie, Richard, Antoine, Bernatchez, Louis
• Other Authors: Institut de Biologie Intégrative et des Systèmes Québec (IBIS), Ministère du Développement Durable, de l'Environnement, de la Faune et des Parcs du Québec, Direction de la Faune Aquatique, This project was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada strategic project grant to L. B., and by the Ministere du Developpement durable, de l'Environnement et de la Faune du Quebec (MDDEP). Ressources Aquatiques Quebec provided fellowship and salary to C. Perrier and E. Normandeau.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2014
• Subjects: effective number of breeders; Effective population size; genetic diversity; kinship; parentage analysis; relatedness; reproductive success; reproductive tactic; [SDV.GEN]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Genetics; Atlantic salmon
• Online Access: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02921373; https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02921373/document; https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02921373/file/eva.12172.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.12172

International audience While nonanadromous males (stream-resident and/or mature male parr) contribute to reproduction in anadromous salmonids, little is known about their impacts on key population genetic parameters. Here, we evaluated the contribution of Atlantic salmon mature male parr to the effective number of breeders (Nb) using both demographic (variance in reproductive success) and genetic (linkage disequilibrium) methods, the number of alleles, and the relatedness among breeders. We used a recently published pedigree reconstruction of a wild anadromous Atlantic salmon population in which 2548 fry born in 2010 were assigned parentage to 144 anadromous female and 101 anadromous females that returned to the river to spawn in 2009 and to 462 mature male parr. Demographic and genetic methods revealed that mature male parr increased population Nb by 1.79 and 1.85 times, respectively. Moreover, mature male parr boosted the number of alleles found among progenies. Finally, mature male parr were in average less related to anadromous females than were anadromous males, likely because of asynchronous sexual maturation between mature male parr and anadromous fish of a given cohort. By increasing Nb and allelic richness, and by decreasing inbreeding, the reproductive contribution of mature male parr has important evolutionary and conservation implications for declining Atlantic salmon populations.