Abstract
Spawning activity of the catfish, Silurus asotus, takes place in temporary water (rice fields) from early evening to midnight, generally in connection with rainfall, from late April to late August. Spawning of the catfish was correlated with hydrographic parameters dependent on rainfall: daily precipitation, turbidity, water depth, and water temperature. The spawning habits of the catfish, and in particular the use of temporary waters such as rice fields that become submerged after rainfall or by irrigation, are presumed to be adaptations to the Asian monsoon climate with a pronounced rainy season. The apparent sex ratio of the catfish was extremely biased toward females. Intraspecific variation in the reproductive ecology, particularly mating behavior, of this species is observed among local populations. Factors that may have caused this variation are discussed in the context of a comparison of mating behavior, reproductive environment, and sex ratio between the Lake Biwa population of S. asotus and other conspecific populations, as well as two other species of silurid catfish that occur in the Lake Biwa drainage, S. biwaensis and S. lithophilus.
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Acknowledgments
I express my sincere gratitude to M. Hori and K. Watanabe, Kyoto University, for their warm-hearted, generous advice and for their critical reading of the manuscript. Heartfelt thanks are also extended to M.J. Grygier, Lake Biwa Museum, for his kind advice concerning English usage, T. Ohtsuka for his kind advice on statistical methods, and Y. Nagata, Osaka Kyoiku University, T. Nakajima, A. Rossiter, M. Youda, Y. Kusuoka, and K. Nakai, Lake Biwa Museum, for their kind advice on the manuscript. I also thank M. Kobayakawa, Kyushu University, Y. Fujioka, Shiga Prefecture Fishery Department, M. Nakamura, University of the Ryukyus, and H. Akiyama, Lake Biwa Museum, for providing some references, and K. Hashimoto, aquarium keeper of the Shimane Kaiyokan, and S. Seki, T. Nagata, and S. Yoshikawa, aquarium keepers of the Lake Biwa Museum, for their kind help in the field. I am beholden to H. Kawanabe, Director General of the Lake Biwa Museum, for his heartfelt encouragement. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments which improved the manuscript. Furthermore, I also thank the Shiga Prefectural Institute of Public Health and Environmental Science and the Hikone Local Weather Agency for providing valuable data. This study is a product of Lake Biwa Museum Cooperative Research Project K−9905, “Study on ecology of fishes that utilize rice fields, and utilization of the fishes by local people”.
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Maehata, M. Reproductive ecology of the Far Eastern catfish, Silurus asotus (Siluridae), with a comparison to its two congeners in Lake Biwa, Japan. Environ Biol Fish 78, 135–146 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-006-9083-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-006-9083-7