Density dependent attributes of fish aggregative behaviour

PeerJ

article

Michaela Holubová¹  Martin Čech¹  Mojmír Vašek¹  Jiří Peterka¹ 

[1] Institute of Hydrobiology, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences;Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia;SoWa, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences

关键词: Open water;    Bream;    Shoaling;    Schooling;    Perch;    Bleak;    Roach;    Freshwater fish;    Emergent properties;    Critical density;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.6378

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Grouping behaviour, as fascinating as it is unclear, has lately drawn the attention of numerous researchers. While most of the authors focused their work on a mechanistic approach to the matter of schooling, this study explores the issue from a population point of view. Present camera observation study on the fish community carried out in the epipelagic habitat of a European temperate reservoir in the Czech Republic explored the relationship between density and aggregative features of predominantly cyprinid fish stock. Results demonstrated that schooling behaviour is triggered by the ‘critical density’ of fish in the habitat. School size as well as counts of schools and proportion of schooling individuals increased with the density of fish. Counts of clusters (observed units in time, including singletons, pairs and schools) and cluster size, on the other hand, showed a slowing tendency to increase. The slower increase implies the tendency of fish for not being frequent but rather to create larger groups. Altogether, our findings suggest that fish density is a triggering factor in the formation of large fish schools. As the tendency of cyprinid species for school formation could be an evolutional advantage responsible for dominance in later succession phases of water bodies, we suggest that more in situ studies should be encouraged for the proper understanding of the ecological interactions that drive the structure of aquatic ecosystems and for ensuring unbiased assessment.

【 授权许可】

CC BY