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Lake water level increase during spring affects the breeding success of bream Abramis brama (L.)

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Abstract

In Lake Constance, Eurasian bream Abramis brama (L.) spawn in very shallow littoral areas by the beginning of May. They attach their adhesive eggs to pebble and cobble substratum at <40 cm depth. Increasing water levels before spawning inundate bare substratum to which bream eggs may attach better than to deeper substratum covered by epilithon. Consequently, the water level increase prior to spawning should determine the amount of pristine spawning substratum available to bream and thus influence their breeding success. In order to test this hypothesis, the influence of hydrology and climate on the abundance of age-0 bream was combined with the results from field investigations on the egg survival and abundance of age-0 bream. A strong positive correlation between the mean water level increase during the spawning season of bream (April–May) and the abundance of juvenile bream was found. In contrast, the absolute water level during spawning and during the nursery stage in summer, the cumulative temperature during the egg, larval and juvenile stages and two North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) indices did not affect the abundance of juvenile bream. The field investigations confirmed that bream eggs attach better to and have higher survival rates on bare substratum than on substratum with epilithon cover. Accordingly, eggs within a spawning habitat of bream were most abundant between 10 and 20 cm depth, where the epilithon cover was lower than at depths exceeding 30 cm. The results of this study confirm an adverse influence of epilithon cover on the attachment and subsequent survival of bream eggs and emphasize the importance of spring inundations for the successful breeding of the bream.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Alfred Sulger for the catch of parent bream, Bärbel Beese and Myriam Schmid for Chl a determination, Martin Wolf for technical support, and Iris Töpfer and Diana Schleuter for assistance in the field. Data on water temperature in May were provided by the Institut für Seenforschung, Langenargen and the International Water Commission of Lake Constance (IGKB). This study was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Collaborative Research Center 454 ‘Littoral Zone of Lake Constance’ and a personal grant to Stefan Stoll by the German National Academic Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Limnological Institute, University of Konstanz, 78457, Constance, Germany

    Wolfgang Nikolaus Probst, Stefan Stoll & Reiner Eckmann

  2. University of Bielefeld, Universitätsstrasse 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Lars Peters

  3. Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, Kurpromenade 201, 27498, Helgoland, Germany

    Philipp Fischer

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  1. Wolfgang Nikolaus Probst
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  2. Stefan Stoll
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Correspondence to Wolfgang Nikolaus Probst.

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Probst, W.N., Stoll, S., Peters, L. et al. Lake water level increase during spring affects the breeding success of bream Abramis brama (L.). Hydrobiologia 632, 211–224 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-009-9842-5

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