0553149 - BC 2022 RIV DE eng J - Journal Article
Šmejkal, Marek - Bartoň, Daniel - Brabec, Marek - Sajdlová, Zuzana - Souza, Allan T. - Moraes, Karlos Ribeiro de - Soukalová, Kateřina - Blabolil, Petr - Vejřík, Lukáš - Kubečka, Jan
Climbing up the ladder: male reproductive behaviour changes with age in a long-lived fish.
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Roč. 75, č. 1 (2021), č. článku 22. ISSN 0340-5443. E-ISSN 1432-0762
R&D Projects: GA TA ČR(CZ) TJ02000012; GA MZe(CZ) QK1920326
Grant - others:AV ČR(CZ) StrategieAV21/21
Program: StrategieAV
Institutional support: RVO:60077344 ; RVO:67985807
Keywords : Telemetry * Reproductive behaviour * Long-term monitoring * Fish ecology * Resource-holding potential
OECD category: Biodiversity conservation; Statistics and probability (UIVT-O)
Impact factor: 2.944, year: 2021
Method of publishing: Open access
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-020-02961-7

High reproductive performance is the key attribute of male fitness, especially due to the high reproductive skew among the males of most animal species. Males of long-lived iteroparous species have opportunities to improve upon their previous reproductive attempts with increasing age. We collected individual-specific reproductive behaviour and age data on a cyprinid fish, the asp (Leuciscus aspius), from 2015 to 2019. We tested whether males changed their performance over time using a unique dataset where individual performance was recorded yearly with passive telemetry. Individual fish behaviour was tracked from one to five reproductive seasons at least a year after the tagging. Fish were scored by measures of quality (first arrival time, number of visits and time spent in the reproductive grounds, and encountered proportion of males to all adult fish). In general, fish improved in the first three metrics with age, suggesting a shift towards behaviours likely to enhance reproductive success as individuals aged. A larger size at tagging was predictive of earlier fish arrival on the spawning ground in subsequent years. Our study therefore demonstrates the importance of age as a factor when considering the potential reproductive success of long-lived fish species.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0328154