Abstract
The vulnerability of fish populations to climate change is driven primarily by impacts on their most vulnerable life stages. The earliest life stages may, in many cases, be more thermally sensitive than juvenile and adult fish, as developing embryos cannot behaviourally thermoregulate. We quantified the survivorship of brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) embryos under a range of winter thermal regimes. In the laboratory, embryos from four populations with varying amounts of native or hatchery-introgressed ancestry were reared under four simulated winter thermal regimes relevant to the central portion of the species’ range: ambient stream temperatures, ambient + 2 °C, ambient with a simulated winter snowmelt event, and ambient followed by an early rise to spring temperatures. Embryo survival (hatching success) differed significantly among populations across all thermal regimes, with the pure native population having the lowest survival. No consistent differences in survivorship across thermal regimes were detected, although native populations exhibited more among-family variability in response to thermal stress. Our study does not align closely with others that found reduced embryo survival under thermal stress, but concurs with observations of substantial intraspecific variation in thermal performance in coldwater fishes. Our results suggest that brook trout embryos may be somewhat resilient in the face of warmer and more variable incubation conditions, but it is likely that their resiliency varies among populations. Future experiments that include more extreme and variable conditions to clarify environmental limits of early life stages of brook trout would be useful for conservation planning.
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Data generated or analyzed during this study are available in the FigShare repository. [Data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24602223.v1; R Script: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24602235].
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Scott Ferguson, Bradley Howell, Dustin Boczek, Mikkaella Hurley, and Derek Lipskie for their assistance with animal care, as well as Christian Bihun and Jacob Bowman for their assistance with mapping software.
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This work was supported by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, Trent University, and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant (to G.D.R).
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Conceptualization: Erin Stewart, Chris Wilson, Graham Raby; Funding acquisition: Chris Wilson, Graham Raby; Data curation: Erin Stewart; Formal Analysis: Erin Stewart; Investigation: Erin Stewart, Emily Lechner, Vince Frasca; Methodology: Erin Stewart, Vince Frasca, Chris Wilson, Graham Raby; Project administration: Erin Stewart, Chris Wilson, Graham Raby; Visualization: Erin Stewart; Resources: Vince Frasca, Chris Wilson; Supervision: Chris Wilson, Graham Raby; Writing – original draft: Erin Stewart; Writing – review & editing: Erin Stewart, Emily Lechner, Vince Frasca, Chris Wilson, Graham Raby.
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Stewart, E.M.C., Lechner, E.R., Frasca, V.R. et al. Differences in embryo survivorship among populations of brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) under variable winter thermal regimes. Environ Biol Fish 107, 189–202 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-024-01524-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-024-01524-3