The effect of ration and temperature on the growth of the three‐spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus L.

Abstract

The effect of ration on the growth of the three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeutus, was studied over the temperature range 3-19" C, which corresponded to the range in their natural habitat. With an ad lib ration, the specific growth rate increased with temperature. The relationship between specific growth rate and ration at a given temperature was curvilinear. Regression models were used to predict the maximum, optimum and maintenance rations at each temperature. Whereas maximum ration increased rapidly with temperature, the optimum and maintenance rations were relatively insensitive to temperature. A regression model was used to describe the overall relationship between specific growth rate and ration, temperature and body weight. This model predicted that at low rations, growth rate decreased with temperature, whereas at high rations, growth rate increased slightly with temperature. The gross growth efficiency increased rapidly with rations above maintenance ration up to a maximum at the optimum ration and declined at higher rations. The maximum gross growth efficiencies were at high temperatures and rations about half of the maximum ration. The maximum net growth efficiencies occurred at relatively low temperature and at rations just above maintenance.

Effect of temperature on growth and energy budget of juvenile cobia (Rachycentron canadum)

“…The relationship between specific growth rate and temperature was a domed curve, described as a quadratic equation (Table 3), which was consistent with the studies on hybrid striped bass × white bass (Woiwode and Adelman, 1991) and juvenile turbot (Imsland et al, 1996). However, the growth-temperature relationship was also reported to be a decelerating curve described as a logarithm function (Russell et al, 1996), a cubic equation (Ruyet et al, 2004) or a power function (Wurtsbaugh and Cech, 1983), and a linearity described as a simple equation (Allen and Wootton, 1982), in some papers. Interspecific differences or a narrow temperature range not beyond a species suitable temperature range in experiments, in part, may explain the discrepancy among these studies.…”

“…The relationships between feed conversion efficiency and temperature were also described as quadratic equations (Table 3), which was similar with the studies on three-spined stickleback (Allen and Wootton, 1982), juvenile mosquitofish (Wurtsbaugh and Cech, 1983), Pagrosomus major (Sun et al, 1999) and Sparus macrocephalus (Sun et al, 2001).…”

Effects of temperature and feeding frequency on ingestion and growth for rare minnow

“…In the absence of predation risk when foraging, the foraging strategies of farmed fish might relate directly to dietary choice and foraging frequency. This dietary choice could be deemed as a fish's foraging habit, which is related to nutrient and energy requirements, as well as the structure and function of the digestive organs [3,14]. Therefore, to obtain rapid growth and high feed efficiency in culturing, it is necessary to set feeding ration and frequency with respect to the capacity of digestion and this should be similar to the "preferred" foraging frequency of the target species.…”

“…Growth of fish is affected by endogenous factors of genotype and physiological condition, and exogenous environmental factors such as food, temperature and oxygen [1][2][3]. In terms of bioenergetics, growth depends on energy intake and its allocation [4,5] and is driven by diet quality and quantity [6][7][8].…”

Comments on the calculation of the specific growth rate in experiments with untagged individuals

“…This simplicity trades-off against a number of dependencies on internal (body weight, genetic background) and environmental factors (temperature, diet) (Allen and Wootton 1982, Rabí and Maraví 1997, Björnsson and Steinarsson 2002, Lefébure et al 2011. These dependencies make up the core of a number of papers dealing, for example, with fish growth: in basic research, the functional expressions connecting G and body size for a given species is frequently explored by means of correlation analyses in order to obtain a model for the growth trajectory ( Björnsson and Steinarsson 2002); in applied research, G is widely used not to model growth, but to assess the performance of different treatments a posteriori (Fontagné et al 2009, Collins et al 2013.…”