Paternal effects on early life history traits in Northwest Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua

Abstract

SummaryIt is important to understand parental effects on early life history of fish as manifested, for example, in individual fitness of offspring. Immediately after fertilization, parental contributions (both genetic and non-genetic) to embryos will affect larval ontogeny, physiology, morphology and survival. In marine fish, rates of natural mortality are highest during early life and are negatively correlated with rates of growth and body size. In these early life stages (eggs, larvae, young juveniles) subtle differences in mortality can cause large differences in recruitment and year-class success. Therefore, it is particularly critical to understand factors that contribute to variability in mortality during early life. This study focuses on evaluating the potential influence of paternity on rates of mortality and development in eggs and larvae of Northwest Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua. To accomplish this 12 males and two females were crossed using a full-factorial breeding design. Paternity had a strong influence on fertilization success, hatching success, cumulative embryonic mortality, larval standard length, eye diameter, yolk-sac area, and cumulative larval mortality. Female 1 showed an overall 'weaker' performance of offspring than Female 2, indicating that deviances can stem from differences in female quality. Nevertheless, paternal contributions to embryonic and larval development were still evident despite differences in female quality, showing that sire effects on offspring are undeniable and can serve as important sources of variation during early life stages in fishes. Overall, these findings have implications for furthering the understanding of recruitment variability and can be used to optimize reproductive output for the aquaculture industry. In addition, the data suggests that the choice of mate during spawning can play a large role in offspring fitness.

Paternal identity impacts embryonic development for two species of freshwater fish

“…For instance, paternal effects on ELH traits have been demonstrated for Atlantic salmon Salmo salar (Thorpe and Morgan, 1978;Houde et al, 2015), brown trout Salmo trutta (Vøllestad and Lillehammer, 2000), rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss (Rinchard et al, 2003), chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (Pitcher and Neff, 2007), masu salmon Oncorhynchus masou (Yamamoto and Reinhardt, 2003), herring Clupea harengus (Panagiotaki and Geffen, 1992;Evans and Geffen, 1998), European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax (Saillant et al, 2001), haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus (Rideout et al, 2004), winter flounder Pseudopleuronectes americanus (Butts and Litvak, 2007a,b), Trinidadian guppy Poecilia reticulata (Reynolds and Gross, 1992), alpine whitefish Coregonus sp. (Wedekind et al, 2001) and Atlantic cod Gadus morhua (Butts et al, 2009;Kroll et al, 2013;Politis et al, 2014).…”

Selection by higher‐order effects of salinity and bacteria on early life‐stages of Western Baltic spring‐spawning herring

“…Parental experience could thus speed up offspring adaptive response to novel environmental conditions via a combination of epigenetics and sex-specific inheritance. While paternal-specific inheritance affects larval length in herring (Bang, Gronkjaer, Clemmesen, & Hoie, 2006) and hatching success in haddock (Rideout, Trippel, & Litvak, 2004) and Atlantic cod (Kroll, Peck, Butts, & Trippel, 2013), maternalspecific inheritance impacts egg and larval size across various fish species (Chambers & Leggett, 1996;Heath & Blouw, 1998;Marteinsdottir & Begg, 2002).…”

Effects of salinity and sea salt type on egg activation, fertilization, buoyancy and early embryology of European eel, Anguilla anguilla

“…Maternal effects on egg diameter have been studied in many fish species and are generally found significant, depending on diet, broodstock condition and timing in relation to the reproductive season (Laale, 1980; Kjørsvik et al , 1990; Morley et al , 1999). Similarly, paternal effects are important, impacting processes related to fertilization (Evans & Geffen, 1998; Kroll et al , 2013). In our study, wild-caught females were crossed with farmed males and we found a clear female effect that accounted for a large proportion of the models variance, e.g.…”