Restored river habitat provides a natural spawning area for a critically endangered landlocked Atlantic salmon population

PLoS One. 2020 May 21;15(5):e0232723. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232723. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Supplementing endangered fish populations with captive bred individuals is a common practice in conservation management. The aim of supplementary releases from hatchery broodstocks is to maintain the viability of populations by maintaining their genetic diversity. Landlocked Lake Saimaa salmon (Salmo salar m. sebago) has been critically endangered for the past half-century. As a result of anthropogenic disturbance, especially construction of hydroelectric power plants, the Lake Saimaa salmon has become completely dependent on hatchery broodstock. Recently, habitat restoration has been done in one of the former spawning rivers with the aim of creating a new natural spawning ground for the critically endangered population. Hatchery fish releases have also been revised so that in addition to juveniles, adult fish from the hatchery and from the wild have been released into the restored river. We assessed here if a restored river stretch can be used as a natural spawning ground and juvenile production area with the aim of improving genetic diversity of the critically endangered Lake Saimaa salmon. By constructing a pedigree of the released adults, and juveniles sampled from the restored river, we found that the majority of the released adults had produced offspring in the river. We also found that wild-caught spawners that were released into the restored river had much higher reproductive success than hatchery-reared parents that were released into the restored river at the same time. We found no significant differences in genetic diversity between the parent and offspring generations. Meanwhile, relatedness among different groups of adults and juveniles varied a lot. For example, while the hatchery-reared females were on average half-siblings, wild-caught females showed no significant relatedness. This highlights the importance of using pedigree information in planning the conservation and management of endangered populations, especially when artificial propagation is involved.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Ecosystem*
  • Endangered Species
  • Female
  • Finland
  • Genetic Variation
  • Geography
  • Male
  • Pedigree
  • Phylogeny
  • Population Density
  • Reproduction / physiology*
  • Rivers*
  • Salmo salar / genetics
  • Salmo salar / physiology*

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.12135993

Grants and funding

The study was funded by grants from the Natural Resources Institute Finland 's Strategic Funding (luke.fi) to AK and MLK, the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (mmm.fi), and the North Savo Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ely-keskus.fi) and Vattenfall AB (vattenfall.fi) to JP.