Fast growers sprint slower: effects of food deprivation and re-feeding on sprint swimming performance in individual juvenile European sea bass

Abstract

While many ectothermic species can withstand prolonged fasting without mortality, food deprivation may have sublethal effects of ecological importance, including reductions in locomotor ability. Little is known about how such changes in performance in individual animals are related to either mass loss during food deprivation or growth rate during re-feeding. This study followed changes in the maximum sprint swimming performance of individual European sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax, throughout 45 days of food deprivation and 30 days of refeeding. Maximum sprint speed did not show a significant decline until 45 days of food deprivation. Among individuals, the reduction in sprinting speed at this time was not related to mass loss. After 30 days of re-feeding, mean sprinting speed had recovered to match that of control fish. Among individuals, however, maximum sprinting speed was negatively correlated with growth rate after the resumption of feeding. This suggests that the rapid compensatory growth that occurs during re-feeding after a prolonged fast carries a physiological cost in terms of reduced sprinting capacity, the extent of which shows continuous variation among individuals in relation to growth rate. The long-term repeatability of maximum sprint speed was low when fish were fasted or fed a maintenance ration, but was high among control fish fed to satiation. Fish that had been previously food deprived continued to show low repeatability in sprinting ability even after the initiation of ad libitum feeding, probably stemming from variation in compensatory growth among individuals and its associated negative effects on sprinting ability. Together, these results suggest that food limitation can disrupt hierarchies of maximum sprint performance within populations. In the wild, the cumulative effects on locomotor capacity of fasting and re-feeding could lead to variable survival among individuals with different growth trajectories following a period of food deprivation. factors that can affect food availability, including acute or seasonal fluctuations in temperature or light levels, and in aquatic environments, salinity, turbidity or oxygenation (Post and Parkinson, 2001). Characteristics of individual animals, such as reproductive state, social status and life stage, also affect the willingness or ability to feed (Patton et al., 1970;Robin et al., 1988;Watts, 1990). High predator abundance can also reduce feeding opportunities, possibly leading to diminished growth or condition (Killen and Brown, 2006;Pérez-Tris et al., 2004). Many ectotherms can withstand weeks, months or even years of food deprivation without mortality (Biro et al., 2004;Hervant et al., 2001;Merkle and Hanke, 1988;van Ginneken and Maes, 2005), but food deprivation can have important sublethal effects on behaviour and physiology. Long periods without feeding can lead to the degradation of skeletal muscle as structural proteins are catabolised for fuel (Bugeon et al., 2004;Johnston, 1981;Wang et al., 2006). Food deprivation can also re...

Plasma osmolality and oxygen consumption of perch Perca fluviatilis in response to different salinities and temperatures

“…The fasting period allowed the fish, particularly at 5° C, to be post‐prandial. Three weeks of fasting at the higher temperatures should not cause physiological impairment (Killen et al ., ; McKenzie et al ., ) and while routine metabolic rate can be affected by fasting period, SMR remains constant after digestion has ended, regardless of temperature (Beamish, ). O 2 was measured in trials lasting c .…”

Can individual variation in phenotypic plasticity enhance population viability?

“…Depending on whether accelerated growth affects energy allocation, individuals that accelerate their growth rate through increased foraging may pay an immediate cost in the form of delays in structural development (Arendt and Wilson, 2000), individual performance (e.g. swimming sprinting speed; Killen et al, 2014)reduced investment in tissue maintenance (Morgan et al, 2000) or reproduction (Auer et al, 2010;Lee et al, 2012Lee et al, , 2016, increased risk of predation while foraging (Gotthard, 2000). Rapid growth may lead to longer-term costs when it results in damage at the physiological or cellular level (Jennings et al, 1999;andreviewed in Metcalfe andMonaghan, 2001, 2003) and on a decreased lifespan (Lee et al, 2013).…”

Effects of nutritional deprivation on juvenile green sturgeon growth and thermal tolerance

“…However, in sturgeons, manipulation of diet ration or nutritional content has been shown to affect growth, energetic status (Hung and Lutes 1987;Cui et al 1997;Hung et al 1997;Deng et al 2009;Han et al 2012;Haller et al 2015) and the cellular response to heat stress (Deng et al 2009;Han et al 2012;Wang et al 2013). Furthermore, diet composition and nutritional status have been shown to influence swimming capacity (Wagner et al 2004;Chatelier et al 2006;Wilson et al 2007;Gingerich et al 2010;Pettersson et al 2010;Killen et al 2014;Silva et al 2014), osmoregulation (Kirschner 1995;Tseng and Hwang 2008;Haller et al 2015), growth at high temperatures (Glencross and Rutherford 2010;Zhou et al 2013) and tolerance of high temperatures (Akhtar et al 2011;Kumar et al 2014;Patterson and Green 2014;Tejpal et al 2014) for a wide range of fish species.…”