874
|
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/eff Ecol Freshw Fish. 2018;27:874–883.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons A/S.
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Accepted: 14 February 2018
DOI: 10.1111/eff.12399
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Red operculum spots, body size, maturation and evidence for
a satellite male phenotype in non- native European populations
of pumpkinseed Lepomis gibbosus
Grzegorz Zięba
1,2
| Carl Smith
2,3,4
| Michael G. Fox
5
| Stan Yavno
5,6
|
Eva Záhorská
7
| Mirosław Przybylski
2
| Gérard Masson
8
| Julien Cucherousset
9
|
Hugo Verreycken
10
| Hein H. van Kleef
11,12
| Gordon H. Copp
1,2,5,13
1
Salmon and Freshwater Team, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft, UK
2
Department of Ecology and Vertebrate Zoology, University of Łódź, Łódź, Poland
3
Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno, Czech Republic
4
School of Biology and Bell-Pettigrew Museum of Natural History, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
5
Environmental and Life Sciences Graduate Program, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada
6
Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University and Inter-University Institute for Marine Sciences, Eilat, Israel
7
Department of Ecology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
8
Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Environnements Continentaux, Université de Lorraine, Metz, France
9
Laboratoire Evolution and Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université Paul Sabatier, CNRS, ENFA, UPS, Toulouse, France
10
Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Brussels, Belgium
11
Department of Animal Ecology and Ecophysiology, Faculty of Science, Bargerveen Foundation, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
12
Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Science, Bargerveen Foundation,, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
13
Centre for Conservation and Environmental Change, School of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth University, Dorset, UK
Correspondence
Gordon H. Copp, Salmon and Freshwater
Team, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and
Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft, UK
Email: gordon.copp@cefas.co.uk
Funding information
Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, Grant/Award Number:
SF0248; Narodowe Centrum Nauki,
Grant/Award Number: DEC-2011/01/D/
NZ8/01807; North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, Grant/Award Number: CLG
979499
Abstract
Carotenoid- based pigmentation is a striking feature of many taxa, yet the function, if
any, of colour traits is often unclear. Pumpkinseed Lepomis gibbosus, a widely intro-
duced freshwater sunfish that exhibits alternative male mating strategies, express a
striking, red operculum spot. To investigate the potential function of this red spot as
a signal in this species’ mating system, we determined the presence and measured
the size of red operculum spots in fish collected from 12 populations in five European
countries in which pumpkinseed is an established non- native species. We subse-
quently related the presence and size of the red spot to body size and mating strat-
egy, based on an analysis of relative gonad size (gonado- somatic index, GSI), using a
mixed modelling approach. The study demonstrated that the presence of a red oper-
culum spot in pumpkinseed is associated with sexual maturation, with GSI frequency
distributions suggesting that cuckolders in some non- native populations comprised
both sneaker and satellite males, the latter not having previously been reported for
this species. Further, the size of red spot correlated strongly with body size in paren-
tal and cuckolder males, although there was no difference in the presence or size of
the red operculum spot between male mating strategies. The function of a red
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