Movement increases the probability for an individual to find food resources, but also increase the metabolic costs and exposure to predators. Hence, swimming behavior of fish is strongly coupled to fitness. Even though swimming activity has been studied in numerous laboratory settings, less is known about in situ activity and its dependence on abiotic factors (temperature, light conditions and barometric pressure). In this study I hypothesized that the activity increases with 1) increasing temperature and decrease with 2) barometric pressure variability and 3) average light conditions (h/day). In order to test the universality of the three hypotheses I also searched for size dependent effects. Fish activity (km/day) was measured in three lakes on individual fish (N=14-21 per lake) using acoustic telemetry providing tracking of fish at a time resolution from seconds to hours. A positive correlation between temperature and swimming activity in line with my first hypothesis was only observed in one of the lakes. The activity decreased with increased variability in barometric pressure in two of the lakes, a finding supporting my second hypothesis. Meanwhile increased light conditions (h/day) decreased activity in one of the lakes, as predicted by my third hypothesis. Nevertheless, none of my hypotheses were valid in all three of the lakes and perch reacted differently to the abiotic factors. One of the possible explanations for this is the importance of size differences as I noticed that the swimming activity differed between bigger and smaller individuals. My findings suggest that not only the temperature, barometric pressure and light conditions alone predict the activity in perch, but also the fish individual size, predation and the metabolic costs linked to thermoregulation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-172751 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Sandberg, Linda |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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