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A multi-approach study to reveal eel life-history traits in an obstructed catchment before dam removal

Hydrobiologia volume 849, pages 1885–1903 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

River fragmentation is expected to impact not only movement patterns and distribution of eels within catchment, but also their life-history traits. Here, we used otolith multi-elemental signatures to reconstruct life sequences of European silver eels within an obstructed catchment, just before the removal of hydropower dams. Beyond providing an initial state, we hypothesized that otolith signatures can provide crucial information on the way eels use the watershed. Indeed, their spatial distribution is expected to shape life-history traits, including condition coefficient, trophic level, growth rate, or infection by metazoan parasites. While Sr:Ca and Ba:Ca ratios were complementary in tracing fish movements between freshwater and estuary, the Ba:Ca variations allowed to discriminate three freshwater sectors. The eels assigned to the midstream sector were more mobile and exhibited lower growth rates, probably in response to higher competition at the vicinity of dams. While most eels are currently produced by downstream and midstream sectors, eels assigned to upper reaches of connected tributaries generally display higher richness in native parasite and higher body condition and lipid reserve, known to promote the success of migration and reproduction. In the near future, the dam removals will represent an outstanding experimental framework for evaluating impacts of catchment reconnection.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was conducted with the financial support of the Agence de l’Eau Seine Normandie and the Office Français pour la Biodiversité. We like to thank the two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions that have contributed to improve the relevance of our manuscript. We are very thankful to colleagues who assisted us during the field survey, especially Christophe Boinet, Sarah Lejosne, and Corentin Gouzien. The experiment was approved by the Cuvier Ethical Committee for Animal Research (DAECC 68-0106) and comply with current laws in France.

Funding

Funding was provide by Agence de l'Eau Seine-Normandie (Nils Teichert and Eric Feunteun).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR 7208 BOREA, MNHN, CNRS, IRD, SU, UCN, UA, Laboratoire de Biologie des Organismes et Ecosystèmes Aquatiques, Paris, France

    Nils Teichert, Anne Lizé, Thomas Trancart & Eric Feunteun

  2. MNHN, Station Marine de Dinard, CRESCO, Dinard, France

    Nils Teichert, Anne Lizé, Thomas Trancart, Laure-Sarah Virag, Emma Robin, Morgan Druet, Jordan Prod’Homme & Eric Feunteun

  3. School of Life Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Anne Lizé

  4. Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, E2S UPPA, CNRS, IPREM, Pau, France

    Hélène Tabouret & Gilles Bareille

  5. UMR 6553 ECOBIO, CNRS, Ecosystèmes, Biodiversité, Evolution, Université de Rennes 1, Rennes, France

    Claudia Gérard

  6. Centre d’ Expertise et de Données PatriNat (OFB – CNRS – MNHN), Station Marine de Dinard, CRESCO, Dinard, France

    Anthony Acou

  7. Pôle R&D OFB, INRAE, Institut Agro - UPPA MIAME (MIgrateurs AMphihalins dans leur Environnement), Rennes, France

    Anthony Acou

  8. Université de Rennes 1, BOREA (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Sorbonne Université, Université de Caen Normandie, Université des Antilles), Campus de Beaulieu, 35000, Rennes, France

    Alexandre Carpentier

  9. INRAE U3E “Experimental Unit on Ecology & Ecotoxicology”, Rennes, France

    Morgan Druet

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  1. Nils Teichert
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  2. Anne Lizé
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  3. Hélène Tabouret
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Contributions

NT Conceptualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Data curation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing—original draft. AL, HT, CG, AC: Methodology, Data curation, Writing—review & editing. GB: Data curation, Writing—review & editing. AA: Project administration, Funding acquisition, Data curation, Writing—review & editing. TT: Writing—review & editing. LV, ER: Methodology, Data curation. MD, JP: Data curation. EF: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing—review & editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nils Teichert.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Teichert, N., Lizé, A., Tabouret, H. et al. A multi-approach study to reveal eel life-history traits in an obstructed catchment before dam removal. Hydrobiologia 849, 1885–1903 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-022-04833-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-022-04833-9

Keywords

  • Phenotypic plasticity
  • Life-history trait
  • River barrier
  • Otolith microchemistry
  • LA-ICP-MS
  • Metazoan parasites