Limited hatchery introgression into wild brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) populations despite reoccurring stocking

Due to increased anthropogenic pressures on many fish populations, supplementing wild populations with captive‐raised individuals has become an increasingly common management practice. Stocking programs can be controversial due to uncertainty about the long‐term fitness effects of genetic introgress...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolutionary applications 2018-10, Vol.11 (9), p.1567-1581
Main Authors: White, Shannon L., Miller, William L., Dowell, Stephanie A., Bartron, Meredith L., Wagner, Tyler
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
brook trout
captive stocking
Ecosystems
Fish hatcheries
Gene frequency
Genotypes
introgression
Original
Population genetics
Reproductive fitness
Salvelinus fontinalis
Stocking
Trout
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Summary:Due to increased anthropogenic pressures on many fish populations, supplementing wild populations with captive‐raised individuals has become an increasingly common management practice. Stocking programs can be controversial due to uncertainty about the long‐term fitness effects of genetic introgression on wild populations. In particular, introgression between hatchery and wild individuals can cause declines in wild population fitness, resiliency, and adaptive potential and contribute to local population extirpation. However, low survival and fitness of captive‐raised individuals can minimize the long‐term genetic consequences of stocking in wild populations, and to date the prevalence of introgression in actively stocked ecosystems has not been rigorously evaluated. We quantified the extent of introgression in 30 populations of wild brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) in a Pennsylvania watershed and examined the correlation between introgression and 11 environmental covariates. Genetic assignment tests were used to determine the origin (wild vs. captive‐raised) for 1,742 wild‐caught and 300 hatchery brook trout. To avoid assignment biases, individuals were assigned to two simulated populations that represented the average allele frequencies in wild and hatchery groups. Fish with intermediate probabilities of wild ancestry were classified as introgressed, with threshold values determined through simulation. Even with reoccurring stocking at most sites, over 93% of wild‐caught individuals probabilistically assigned to wild origin, and only 5.6% of wild‐caught fish assigned to introgressed. Models examining environmental drivers of introgression explained
ISSN:1752-4571
1752-4571
DOI:10.1111/eva.12646