Various population parameters and physiological, behavioral, morphometric, meristic, calcareous, biochemical, and cytogenetic characters have been used to identify fish stocks. We define a stock as an intraspecific group of randomly mating individuals with temporal or spatial integrity. Each character set and the associated methodology relates to specific aspects of the stock definition. Population parameters are useful primarily for the recognition of putative stocks at the practical fisheries management level. Physiological and, to some degree, behavioral characters are used primarily to study differences in the adaptation of stocks to different environments. Behavioral characters are also important for the recognition of stocks and the study of their spatial and temporal discreteness. Morphological characters, including morphometric measurements, meristic counts, and the shape, size, and type of zonation in calcareous structures provide data that are useful for the precise description of and differentiation among stocks. Although the genetic control of this type of variation is poorly understood, multivariate methods coupled with shape analyses provide techniques that describe intraspecific subdivisions that have been found to correspond to genetic stock structure as determined by other methods. Intraspecific chromosomal variation has, on occasion, been employed for stock identification. This variation has had only limited application to the study of stocks because of complications arising from intraindividual variation and artifactual variation introduced by the methodology. Electrophoresis provides an important method for measuring the genetic discreteness of stocks and for the study of genetic relationships among stocks. Electrophoretic data have recently attained a primary position among the methods used for stock identification.Key words: stock identification, genotype, phenotype, population parameters, marking, physiological, behavioral, morphometric, meristic, calcareous, cytogenetic, and biochemical characters

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) of 2422 brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) from 60 units (major drainages, small stream catchments, and isolated lakes) representing 155 populations in eastern North America were examined to test hypotheses regarding postglacial dispersal and recolonization. An analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated that 38.8% of the variation was partitioned among the units, while approximately 60% was distributed among populations (phiST = 59.3) compared with 40.7% within populations. This distribution of variation suggests a large degree of heterogeneity in population founding events and phylogeographic structuring in this species. Comparisons of mtDNA diversity between fish from putative refugial and recolonization zones for this species indicate that more than one refugial region contributed to northern recolonization. Haplotypic diversities in recolonized regions are greatest in south-central populations (i.e., southern Great Lakes region), while only one haplotype (haplotype 1) predominates in northern, western, and eastern postglacial zones. Large phylogenetic differences were found between northern and southern populations. Populations outside the zone of glaciation were the most genetically heterogeneous and were represented by fish from all six (A-F) of the major evolutionary clades identified. Only fish from the A, B, and C clades were found in glaciated regions, with C lineage fish restricted to south-central glaciation zones. Fish from the C clade are putatively the most ancestral lineage within the species based upon composite shared RFLPs with lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus).

No abstract

No abstract

We searched for linkage among 24 polymorphic loci (allozymes, RAPD, microsatellites) in three half-sib backcross families of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) produced by crossing strains divergent for the quantitative trait of upper temperature tolerance. Seven significant and two suggestive pairwise linkage associations between molecular marker loci were observed involving 14 loci clustered into four linkage groups. The association between a pair of allozyme loci (sIDHP-3* and mMEP-2*) has been reported previously. Recombination rates varied greatly between the sexes and families. Two quantitative trait loci (QTL) were mapped by detecting a significant association between variance in upper temperature tolerance and alleles at the microsatellite loci Omy325UoG and Ssa14DU. The two QTL appear to reside in different linkage groups and account for :13 per cent and 9 per cent of the overall additive genetic variance in upper temperature tolerance. No significant interaction was detected between Omy325UoG and Ssa14DU suggesting that the effects of the QTL are additive.