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Publication
Ontogeny of critical swimming speed of wild-caught and laboratory-reared red drum Sciaenops ocellatus larvae
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Critical swimming speed (Ucrit) provides a useful estimate of maximum swimming performance
for fish larvae that can be used to assess transport and migratory potential. We measured
Ucrit of red drum Sciaenops ocellatus larvae through its ontogeny and compared the swimming performance
of laboratory-reared larvae to that of wild-caught individuals. Ucrit increased with ontogeny
(size), even though variability in Ucrit at any ontogenetic state was large. Ucrit for wild-caught larvae
increased from 9.7 to 22.2 cm s–1 over the range of 8.3 to 16.3 mm TL and from 1.1 to 20.5 cm s–1 over
the range of 3.0 to 19.1 mm TL for reared larvae. The ontogenetic increase in critical swimming speed
occurred in 2 phases—an early phase of rapid improvement and a later phase of slower improvement.
This sharp change in the trajectory of swimming performance coincided with important
changes in ecology, morphology, and hydrodynamics. During the early phase, larvae were pelagic,
their growth was highly allometric, especially in the caudal region, and they swam in the inertial
hydrodynamic regime. The onset of the later phase coincided with settlement into seagrass beds, isometric
growth, and inertial effects on locomotion. Wild larvae generally exhibited greater values of
Ucrit than reared larvae of a comparable size, but the difference was not statistically significant. The
results of this comparison imply that research on reared larvae may provide naturalistic results for
swimming performance and that hatchery-produced larvae may perform certain behaviours well
when released into the wild.
Description
Keywords
Scaling Ontogeny Swimming performance Settlement Hydrodynamics Wild larvae Reared larvae
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Marine Ecology Progress Series, 384, 221-230