Growth potential can affect timing of maturity in a long-lived semelparous fish

Many diadromous fishes such as salmon and eels that move between freshwater and the ocean have evolved semelparous reproductive strategies, but both groups display considerable plasticity in characteristics. Factors such as population density and growth, predation risk or reproduction cost have been...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology Letters
Main Authors: Pierre Elie, Nobuto Fukuda, Katsumi Tsukamoto, W. Russell Poole, Ryusuke Sudo, Kazuki Yokouchi, Françoise Daverat, Michael J. Miller
Other Authors: Ecosystèmes aquatiques et changements globaux (UR EABX), Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: The Royal Society 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02074327/file/bx2018-pub00059706.pdf
https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC6083232/
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0269
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02074327
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02074327/document
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0269
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0269
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0269
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29997187
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29997187/
https://europepmc.org/article/MED/29997187
https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2840486805
Description
Summary:Many diadromous fishes such as salmon and eels that move between freshwater and the ocean have evolved semelparous reproductive strategies, but both groups display considerable plasticity in characteristics. Factors such as population density and growth, predation risk or reproduction cost have been found to influence timing of maturation. We investigated the relationship between female size at maturity and individual growth trajectories of the long-lived semelparous European eel, Anguilla anguilla . A Bayesian model was applied to 338 individual growth trajectories of maturing migration-stage female silver eels from France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Hungary. The results clearly showed that when growth rates declined, the onset of maturation was triggered, and the eels left their growth habitats and migrated to the spawning area. Therefore, female eels tended to attain larger body size when the growth conditions were good enough to risk spending extra time in their growth habitats. This flexible maturation strategy is likely related to the ability to use diverse habitats with widely ranging growth and survival potentials in the catadromous life-history across its wide species range.