Abstract
Life-history traits of eels display a high level of phenotypic plasticity in response to large-scale biogeographical drivers, as well as local conditions encountered during the continental phase. Here, we provided a biogeographical snapshot of the variability of life-history traits of eels (Anguilla anguilla), across a large proportion of their natural distribution range. Silver eels (n = 99) were collected across eleven European catchments to investigate how life-history traits vary along geographical and saline habitats, as it was inferred from the Sr:Ca ratio in otoliths. Among 13 life-history traits tested, 3 of them such as total length, body or liver weight were related to geographical coordinates. Overall, eels grow faster in southern Europe and migrate earlier suggesting that the silvering process is related to the local growth conditions more than fish age. The salinity profiles revealed by the otoliths’ Sr:Ca ratios indicate that eels with a brackish life-history generally grow faster, reach larger size-at-age, and have a better condition than eels living in freshwater. This observation associated with the lower abundance of the sanguivorous swimbladder nematode, Anguillicola crassus, confirms the importance of brackish areas for sustaining the eel production. A large proportion of the observed variation of life-history traits remained unexplained by the biogeographical trends and salinity condition, which suggests that other drivers act at the catchment scale.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The international EELIAD project (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/212133/reporting) was coordinated by Cefas (UK) and funded by the European Union FP7 research program on Environment (grant GOCE-2008212133). We are very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions that have contributed to improve the relevance and quality of our manuscript. We especially thank the professional fishermen and all the people involved in the eel sampling, particularly Håkan Wickström and Niklas Sjöberg (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), Kim Aarestrup and Michael Ingemann Pedersen (Technical University of Denmark), Michael Godard (Cefas, England), Liz Baldwin (Environment Agency, England), Russell Poole (Marine Institute, Ireland), Paddy Gargan and Gustavo Becerra-Jurado (Inland Fisheries, Ireland), Claude Belpaire (INBO, Belgium), Gregory E. Maes (KU Leuven, Belgium), Elisabeth Faliex and Elsa Amilhat (Perpignan University, France), Clarisse Boulenger (Agrocampus of Rennes, France), Catherine Boisneau (University of Tours, France), Sylvie Dufour (BOREA, France) and Javier Lobón-Cerviá (Madrid National Museum of Natural Science, Spain), as well as participation of colleagues for eel dissections (R. Gadais, R. Lecomte-Finiger, S. Pottier, E. Réveillac and G. Simon). We thank Professor Katsumi Tsukamoto from the University of Tokyo who invited E. Feunteun in his laboratory at the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo) to measure strontium (Sr) and calcium (Ca).
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NT: methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft. BB: Data curation, Methodology, Writing—review & editing. KS: investigation, data curation, writing—review and editing. AA: methodology, data curation, validation, writing—review and editing. AC: writing—review and editing. MK: resources, writing—review and editing. DR: conceptualization, funding acquisition, writing—review and editing. TT: writing—review and editing. L-sV: methodology, investigation, and data curation. AW: resources, investigation, writing—review and editing. TO: resources, writing—review and editing. ÉF: conceptualization, supervision, project administration, validation, writing—review and editing.
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Teichert, N., Bourillon, B., Suzuki, K. et al. Biogeographical snapshot of life-history traits of European silver eels: insights from otolith microchemistry. Aquat Sci 85, 39 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-023-00940-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-023-00940-4