Evidence for Lack of Homing by Sea Lampreys

Abstract

Recently metamorphosed sea lampreys Petromyzon marinus were captured in the Devil River, a tributary to Lake Huron, during summer and autumn 1990. They were tagged with a coded wire tag and returned to the river to continue their migration to Lake Huron to begin the parasitic (juvenile) phase of their life. During the spawning run in spring 1992 when the tagged animals were expected to mature and return to spawn, sea lampreys were trapped in nine tributaries to Lake Huron, including the Devil River; 47,946 animals were examined for coded wire tags, and 41 tagged animals were recovered. None of the 45 mature sea lampreys captured in the Devil River in 1992 were tagged, a proportion (0%) significantly lower than the proportion of the recently metamorphosed sea lampreys tagged in 1990. The distribution of tag recoveries among streams lakewide, however, was proportional to catch. Tagged sea lampreys did not appear to home, but instead seemed to select spawning streams through innate attraction to other sensory cues.

Mitochondrial DNA fails to reveal genetic structure in sea-lampreys along European shores

“…The lack of differentiation found in European rivers is consistent with the lack of homing repeatedly found for this species (Bergstedt and Seelye, 1995) and its ability to travel many hundreds or thousands of kilometres. Fishes with some degree of homing (e.g.…”

“…This lack of differentiation is not caused by insufficient variability in the markers used, as demonstrated by the differentiation among populations of lakes where the sea lamprey is possibly native (Bryan et al, 2005;Waldman et al, 2006). More likely, the lack of structure in Atlantic rivers results from the lack of homing in this species (Bergstedt and Seelye, 1995). Instead of homing, the sea lampreys are attracted by unknown cues coming from the 1055-7903/$ -see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.…”

Capture and collection of lampreys: the state of the science

“…6). In most cases, passive gear is used in short-term, mark-recapture studies and to obtain specimens for research (Smith and Elliott 1953;Beamish 1980;Beamish and Levings 1991;Bergstedt and Seelye 1995;Moser and Close 2003;Masters et al 2006;Jang and Lucas 2005) or in fisheries (Tuunainen et al 1980;Valtonen 1980;Sjoberg 1980). However, long-term adult trapping efforts in the Great Lakes have been used to develop estimates of lamprey abundance and survival .…”

Sea lampreyPetromyzon marinus: an exception to the rule of homing in anadromous fishes

“…Evidence that sea lamprey Petromyzon marinus might not show homing fidelity emerged from Lake Huron of the Great Lakes watershed, where a tagging study of 555 outmigrating individuals from Devil River to Lake Huron recaptured 42 in-migrating spawning adults in four other rivers but none in Devil River (Bergstedt & Seelye 1995). To test whether this apparent absence of homing in its non-native landlocked range (Waldman et al 2004) is a species-wide characteristic, we examined the population structure of anadromous sea lampreys in their native range collected from rivers within the Acadian and Virginian zoogeographic provinces, between Quebec and New York.…”