Recruitment and abundance of an invasive fish, the common carp, is driven by its propensity to invade and reproduce in basins that experience winter-time hypoxia in interconnected lakes

Abstract

Although the common carp is globally distributed, it only reaches extreme densities in certain regions. We hypothesized that this phenomenon might be linked to recruitment bottlenecks which carp overcome where environmental conditions create unstable peripheral areas that it can access for spawning and nursery habitat. To test this hypothesis, the abundance, movement and reproductive success of carp was determined in two systems of inter-connected lakes in the North American Midwest whose shallow basins frequently experience winter-hypoxia (‘winterkill’). Radio-tracking demonstrated that while adult carp overwinter in deep lakes that do not winterkill, they aggressively move into winterkill-prone shallow regions in the spring to spawn. The significance of this behavior was demonstrated by ageing analyses which found that carp recruit only in interconnected shallow lakes and then only in years following severe winter hypoxia. Presumably this strategy allows carp to exploit nursery habitat that is relatively free of predators. It likely evolved in response to seasonally variable conditions in the carp’s native habitat in the Ponto-Caspian region. This life history may also explain the carp’s abundance in other unstable regions such as southern Australia and could potentially be exploited to control this damaging invasive.