Encountering a bait is necessary but insufficient to explain individual variability in vulnerability to angling in two freshwater benthivorous fish in the wild.

ABSTRACT: Fish personality traits, such as swimming activity, or personality related emergent behavioural properties, such as the degree of space use shown by an individual fish, should affect encounter rates between individual fish and fishing gear. Increased encounters should in turn drive vulnerability to capture by passively operated gears. However, empirical evidence documenting a relationship between activity-based behaviours and vulnerability to capture by passive fishing gear in the wild is limited. Using whole-lake acoustic telemetry, we first documented significant repeatabilities over several months in a suite of encounter rate-associated behaviours (swimming distance, activity space size, time on baited feeding sites, switching frequency among baited feeding sites, distance to the lake b

SUBMITTER: Monk CT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5354434 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature