Abstract
Fish from lotic environments generally have a variety of flow velocities available to them in their immediate environment. Other than prey availability or predator presence, little is known about what factors determine where in this mosaic of flows an individual fish will choose to locate. Since individuals of a species can have substantially different swimming abilities, and interspecific differences in flow velocity selection have been related to differential swimming abilities, one possibility is that an animal’s physical condition constrains the flow environments it chooses to occupy. Additionally, since the flow in an animal’s environment can contribute to swimming ability, there could also be environmental control over flow selection behavior. This study examined whether flow velocity selection by individual blacknose dace (Rhinichthys atratulus) is a repeatable trait in the laboratory, and whether it is a function of either the animal’s swimming ability or the magnitude of flow in their home stream reach. Blacknose dace from two populations, collected from each of two separate reaches with substantially different flows from within their home streams, exhibited significantly repeatable flow velocity selection over the course of 1 day in the laboratory. The flow velocity selected by the fish varied significantly among individual dace. Some of this variance was accounted for by fish from the slower stream reaches choosing significantly faster flows than did those from faster reaches. There were no significant differences in flow selection behavior between populations. There was also no relationship between sprinting ability and the flow velocity selected by a fish.
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Acknowledgements
We thank John M. Eikenberg, Kirk Gastrich, Bridget A. Hill and Sara Weglein for help with making the flow selection chamber “experiment-ready”, Kevin Datoria for field assistance and D.F. Lott for inspiration regarding the experimental design. We gratefully acknowledge the Jess and Mildred Fisher College of Science and Mathematics of Towson University for financial support of NW and support for JJC Jr. by the University of California, Davis, Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology and grant #3455-H of the California Agricultural Experiment Station.
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Williamson, N.E., Cech, J.J. & Nelson, J.A. Flow preferences of individual blacknose dace (Rhinichthys atratulus); influence of swimming ability and environmental history. Environ Biol Fish 95, 407–414 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-012-0014-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-012-0014-5