Maternal effects in vulnerability to eye-parasites and correlations between behavior and parasitism in juvenile Arctic charr

摘要: Hatchery-reared fish show high mortalities after release to the wild environment. Explanations for this include potentially predetermined genetics, behavioral, and physiological acclimation farm environments, increased vulnerability predation parasitism in wild. We studied Diplostomum spp. parasites (load of eye flukes lenses), immune defense (relative spleen size) antipredator behaviors (approaches toward predator odor, freezing, swimming activity) hatchery-reared juvenile Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) using a nested mating design. Fish were exposed eye-fluke larvae via incoming water at hatchery. size was positively associated with parasite load, but we did not find any relationship between relative parasitism. The offspring different females showed significant variation their load within sires, implying dam effect parasites. However, family background have on size. In mean sire level over dams, from bolder (actively swimming) families trials suffered higher loads than those more cautiously behaving families. Thus, results indicate maternally inherited differences parasites, that behavioral activity are each other level. This could lead artificial unintentional selection both if these traits favored environments.