Skip Navigation



Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on April 13, 2009
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arp039
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
20/3/616    most recent
arp039v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Hansen, E. A.
Right arrow Articles by Closs, G. P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Hansen, E. A.
Right arrow Articles by Closs, G. P.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Long-term growth and movement in relation to food supply and social status in a stream fish

Eric A. Hansen and Gerard P. Closs

Department of Zoology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9001, New Zealand

Address correspondence to E.A. Hansen. E-mail: hanse989{at}umn.edu.


  Abstract

Long-term patterns of residency, growth, and movement among drift-feeding fish in relation to their social status and macroinvertebrate drift were determined. Each month, over 21 months, we quantified macroinvertebrate drift, fish abundance, and biomass, recorded individual fish lengths, weights, and social rank, and monitored individual diel activity of fish residing in different pools. Despite marked variation in food supply between pools, average growth rates within each pool were not significantly different. However, size and growth of the largest (dominant) fish (i.e., ones that had priority access to preferred feeding positions and times) was positively related to food supply. In contrast, the distribution and growth of smaller subordinate fish were only weakly related to the distribution of resources. Over the 21 months of study, growth rates of the first-ranked fish were high and they rarely relocated to a new pool. Second- and third-ranked fish exhibited comparatively low growth rates and relocated to new pools more frequently than fish of any other ranks (higher or lower). Movement of these fish from their original pool of residency did not always result in increased growth rates. Overall, our study demonstrates that short-term behavioral responses to spatial and temporal resource availability and intraspecific competition (i.e., social status) interact to determine long-term patterns of distribution, movement, and growth.

Key words: distribution, dominance, giant kokopu, growth, movement, social hierarchies.

Received 14 May 2008; revised 16 December 2008; accepted 17 January 2009.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.