This study examines whether injections of the commonly used bacterial-challenge pathogen Listonella anguillarum (formerly Vibrio anguillarum) negatively impact the ability of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss Walbaum to perform repeat swimming trials. Fish were given intraperitoneal injections of either a sub-lethal (10 5 colony forming units; CFUs) or a lethal (10 7 CFUs) dose of L. anguillarum, held for 48 h, and then given 2 successive ramp critical swimming speed (U crit ) tests separated by 45 min. Compared with saline-injected control fish, the low-dose injection did not significantly impair swimming performance and recovery. Similarly, U crit and re-performance for fish surviving the high-dose injection were comparable to control (2 of 6 fish died after injection and before testing). In contrast, a positive control test of seawater challenge did impair recovery of swimming performance. In view of these results and common use of L. anguillarum as a challenge pathogen for toxicological studies, it seems unlikely that the consequences of pathogenesis impact the important cardiorespiratory changes associated with exercise.KEY WORDS: Listonella anguillarum · Vibriosis · Seawater · Swimming performance · Recovery · Critical swimming speed · U crit
Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherDis Aquat Org 67: [81][82][83][84][85][86] 2005 been tested. Therefore, the principle aim of this study was to examine the effect of L. anguillarum injections on rainbow trout swimming and recovery ability using repeated ramp-U crit testing (Jain et al. 1997).
MATERIALS AND METHODSFish. Rainbow trout (mass 379 ± 12 g, fork length 29.8 ± 0.3 cm) were acquired from Sun Valley Trout Farm (Mission, BC) and maintained in flow-through dechlorinated municipal water (temperature 8.9 ± 0.3°C; dissolved oxygen > 8 mg O 2 l -1 ) at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans/University of British Columbia (DO/UBC) Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research (West Vancouver, BC). Fish were fed commercial trout chow ad libitum once daily.Swimming performance protocol. Swimming measurements were performed in a 215 l, mobile Bretttype respirometer described in Farrell et al. (2003). Individual trout were taken to stage 3 anesthesia (Summerfelt & Smith 1990) ), which allowed fish to remain stationary on the bottom of the chamber without swimming. After the recovery period, trout were given a conditioning swim that consisted of an abbreviated step velocity test (described in Jain et al. 1997). For the conditioning swim, water speed was increased in regular increments of 0.15 BL s -1 every 2 min until the fish was unwilling to swim faster and rested on the electric grid at the rear of the swim chamber. The conditioning swim was intended to eliminate the potential training effect of repeat swimming (Farlinger & Beamish 1978, Jain et al. 1997 and also provide an index of individual performance to set the ramp velocities. Following acclimation and beginning at approximately the same time of day (...