| Summary: | Stocking of hatchery produced fish is common practise to mitigate declines in natural populations and may have unwanted genetic consequences. Here we describe a novel phenomenon arising where broodstock used for stocking may be introgressed with farmed individuals. We test how stocking affects introgression in a wild population of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) by quantifying how the number of adult offspring recaptured in a stocked river depend on parental introgression. We found that hatchery conditions favour farmed genotypes such that introgressed broodstock produce up to four times the number of adult offspring compared to non-introgressed broodstock, leading to increased introgression in the recipient spawning population. Our results provide the first empirical evidence that stocking can unintentionally favour introgressed individuals and through selection for domesticated genotypes compromise the fitness of stocked wild populations. SupplementarySoftwareR code.seaAge_analysisThis is a c++ file required to run the sea age analysis. The user does not need to open the cpp file, but the cpp file must be in the same working directory as the R code.SourceDataThis file contains source data to reproduce all tables and figures. The file contains 3 data sets. Readme information is included in the xlsx file. Save the respective work sheets as txt files to use as Source data for the accompanying R code.
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