Population abundance in arctic grayling using genetics and close‐kin mark‐recapture

Abstract Arctic Grayling (Thymallus arcticus) are among the most widely distributed and abundant freshwater fish in the Yukon Territory of Canada, yet little information exists regarding their broad and fine‐scale population structures or the number and size of these populations. The estimation of p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology and Evolution
Main Authors: Samuel Prystupa, Gregory R. McCracken, Robert Perry, Daniel E. Ruzzante
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2021
Subjects:
census size
CKMR
parent offspring pairs
population abundance
population structure
Thymallus arcticus
Ecology
QH540-549.5
Arctic
Yukon
Canada
Lubbock
Lubbock River
Arctic grayling
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7378
https://doaj.org/article/71ce1f380f614fc3957063f55e2b393d
Description
Summary:Abstract Arctic Grayling (Thymallus arcticus) are among the most widely distributed and abundant freshwater fish in the Yukon Territory of Canada, yet little information exists regarding their broad and fine‐scale population structures or the number and size of these populations. The estimation of population abundance is fundamental for robust management and conservation, yet estimating abundance in the wild is often difficult. Here, we estimated abundance of an Arctic Grayling population using multiple genetic markers and the close‐kin mark‐recapture (CKMR) method. A total of N = 1,104 Arctic Grayling collected from two systems in Yukon were genotyped at 38 sequenced microsatellites. We first identified structure and assessed genetic diversity (effective population size, N^e). Collections from one of the systems (Lubbock River) comprised adults and young‐of‐the‐year sampled independently allowing the identification of parent–offspring pairs (POPs), and thus, the estimation of abundance using CKMR. We used COLONY and CKMRsim to identify POPs and both provided similar results leading to indistinguishable estimates (95% CI) of census size, that is, N^c(COLONY) = 1858 (1259–2457) and N^c(CKMRsim)=1812 (1229–2389). The accuracy of the population abundance estimates can in the future be improved with temporal sampling and more precise age or size‐specific fecundity estimates for Arctic Grayling. Our study demonstrates that the method can be used to inform management and conservation policy for Arctic Grayling and likely also for other fish species for which the assumption of random and independent sampling of adults and offspring can be assured.

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