Movement beyond the mean: decoupling sources of individual variation in brook trout movement across seasons

Environmental Biology of Fishes
By: , and 

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Abstract

Movement is an important eco-evolutionary process that can shape population and ecosystem structure and function. Accordingly, a firm understanding of species movement ecology is often foundational to effective management and conservation. However, despite movement being an inherently individual-level behavior, there remains a tendency to describe dispersal and migration patterns using simple population-level processes and effects. Overlooking within- and among-individual variation in movement risks incomplete understanding of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that govern dispersal dynamics and could potentially result in inadequate management of critical behavioral phenotypes. In this study, we monitored movement of over 100 brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) and quantified the effect of individual-level traits, season, and their interactions to better understand factors that influence vagility. Our results suggest that movement was higher in fall than in summer, particularly for fish in poor condition. But we found no significant main effects for sex, providing no evidence for sex-biased dispersal. To better understand sources of individual variation, we also allowed for sex- and season-specific residual standard deviations. In doing so, we found that, on average, movement was more variable in fall compared to summer, and that females were more variable than males in vagility. Taken together, these results demonstrate how intrinsic, individual-level traits can interact with abiotic environmental conditions to determine movement. They also highlight the potential for simple explanations of movement ecology to overlook important traits that may help predict individual-level behaviors.

Study Area

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Movement beyond the mean: decoupling sources of individual variation in brook trout movement across seasons
Series title Environmental Biology of Fishes
DOI 10.1007/s10641-023-01501-2
Volume 106
Publication Date December 27, 2023
Year Published 2023
Language English
Publisher Springer Link
Contributing office(s) Coop Res Unit Leetown, Eastern Ecological Science Center
Description 14 p.
First page 2205
Last page 2218
Country United States
State Pennsylvania
Other Geospatial Loyalsock Creek
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