Issue |
Knowl. Manag. Aquat. Ecosyst.
Number 423, 2022
Anthropogenic impact on freshwater habitats, communities and ecosystem functioning
|
|
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Article Number | 17 | |
Number of page(s) | 9 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/kmae/2022013 | |
Published online | 29 July 2022 |
Research Paper
Age and growth rates of a translocated chub Squalius cephalus chalk-stream population with comparison to indigenous riverine populations in England
Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, Bournemouth University, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, UK
* Corresponding author: rbritton@bournemouth.ac.uk
Received:
16
February
2022
Accepted:
20
April
2022
Introduced fishes into lowland rivers can result in invasive populations establishing and then dispersing, where knowledge of their life history traits contributes to understandings of their invasion ecology. Here, the age and growth rates of a translocated chub Squalius cephalus population were assessed in the River Frome, a lowland chalk-stream in Southern England, where chub was introduced approximately 15 years ago. The results were assessed in relation to 35 riverine indigenous chub populations in England. Across these populations, individual chub were present to lengths over 550 mm and aged to at least 19 years old. In samples collected from the River Frome, however, no fish were present over 300 mm and age 4+years. Growth rate analyses of both the annual length increment produced between age 1 and 2 years (juvenile growth rate) and length at the last annulus (adult growth rate) revealed that both of these were relatively high in the River Frome population, being among the fastest of all sampled populations. It is suggested these fast growth rates were the response of the fish to their new environment, facilitating their establishment and colonisation through, for example, enabling reproduction at relatively young ages.
Key words: Alien fish / latitudinal position / longitudinal position / invasion
© B.I.C. Warren et al., Published by EDP Sciences 2022
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY-ND (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
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