Browsing by Subject "Gulf of Mexico, Spotted seatrout"
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Item Relationships between the behavioral dynamics of fish spawning aggregations and reproductive resilience(2019-08) Biggs, Christopher, Ph. D.; Erisman, Brad E.; Fuiman, Lee A; Heyman , William D; Lowerre-Barbieri, Susan K; Yeager, Lauren AIn the context of reproductive resilience, the dynamics of phenotypically plastic spawning behaviors are shaped by the environmental and anthropogenic stressors that a species is exposed to. Spawning locations, timing, and periodicity are three characteristics that are progressively being recognized as important aspects of productivity and resilience in fish species. The chapters of this dissertation examine those factors as they are filtered through the ecological contexts of the environment, life history traits and fisheries exploitation. The following research covers spatio-temporal scales from a species and site-specific study of spawning behavior to a multi-species, regional study of spawning behavior and the interactions with fisheries. Chapters two and three illustrate how reproductive resilience is realized in species that spawn frequently across spatially diverse locations. These reproductive traits have evolved to maintain reproductive success and population stability in response to the unpredictable and highly variable environments the species inhabit. Chapter four investigates the use of passive acoustic techniques to locate and monitor spawning in species that produce sound during the spawning process. That study seeks to resolve the spatial resolution of passive acoustic sampling and monitoring in shallow estuarine environments. Chapter five provides further support for including spawning behaviors in the study of productivity and resilience in fish populations by showing that species that aggregate to spawn, along with large changes in density, for short and predictable time periods, are the most vulnerable to targeted fishing and are more likely to have been historically overfished. This work builds on the concept and framework of reproductive resilience in fish and provides both theoretical support and empirical evidence for further consideration of the spatial and temporal components of spawning in stock assessments, climate variability assessments and the conservation of fish populations