Freshwater fish dispersal and movement detection technology

Dispersal and movement influence individual fitness, population dynamics, genetic variation, population persistence, and habitat colonization. In many species, one sex disperses further than the other, the degree of bias covarying with mating system. Dispersal is reportedly female-biased in socially monogamous birds, but male-biased in promiscuous animals. Many species also exhibit within-population variability in movement; some individuals are termed 'stationary' while others are 'mobile'. In fishes, neither the adaptive significance of sex-biased dispersal nor the fitness consequences of individual variability in mobility are known.Funding is requested here for state-of-the-art technology that is used to monitor and quantify movements in freshwater fishes. The research tools requested comprise fixed and mobile antennae that will be used to detect the presence of fish marked with Passive Integrated Transponder, or PIT, tags (Biomark®). These tags will be implanted in brook trout inhabiting Freshwater River, Newfoundland, a population that has been studied since 1987. PIT tags are small (12.0 X 2.1 mm) glass cylinders comprised of a coil and an integrated circuit, programmed to transmit one of some billions of codes. An induction coil is used to energize each tag, causing them to transmit their corresponding 10-digit alphanumeric code to the digital display of the reader in which the coil is housed. To detect these tags with negligible disturbance to the animals, one requires a combination of stationary and mobile antennae that can be deployed throughout the river.The results of these dispersal and movement studies will be used in conjunction with microsatellite-DNA parentage analyses to explore the fitness consequences of sex-biased dispersal and mobility in a member of the Salmonidae, the family of fish that includes species of the greatest recreational and commercial importance, and of conservation concern, throughout Canada.