Partial migration is a common phenomenon among many animals and occurs in many types of ecosystems. Understanding the mechanisms behind partial migration is of major importance for the understanding of population dynamics and, eventually, ecosystem processes. We studied the effects of food availability on the seasonal partial migration of cyprinid fish from a lake to connected streams during winter by the use of passive telemetry. Fish with increased access to food were found to migrate in higher proportion, earlier in the season, and to reside in the streams for a longer period compared to fish with decreased access to food. Furthermore, fewer unfed migrants returned to the lake, indicating higher overwinter mortality. Our results suggest that individual fish trade off safety from predation and access to food differently depending on their body condition, which results in a condition-dependent partial migration. Hence, our main conclusion is that individual decision-making is based on assessment of own condition which offers a mechanistic explanation to partial migration. Moreover, this may be of high importance for understanding population responses to environmental variation as well as ecosystem dynamics and stability.

Partial migration, whereby only a fraction of the population migrates, is thought to be the most common type of migration in the animal kingdom, and can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences. Despite this, the factors that influence which individuals migrate and which remain resident are poorly understood. Recent work has shown that consistent individual differences in personality traits in animals can be ecologically important, but field studies integrating personality traits with migratory behaviour are extremely rare. In this study, we investigate the influence of individual boldness, an important personality trait, upon the migratory propensity of roach, a freshwater fish, over two consecutive migration seasons. We assay and individually tag 460 roach and show that boldness influences migratory propensity, with bold individuals being more likely to migrate than shy fish. Our data suggest that an extremely widespread personality trait in animals can have significant ecological consequences via influencing individual-level migratory behaviour.

Partial migration, where only some individuals from a population migrate, has been widely reported in a diverse range of animals. In this paper, what is known about the causes and consequences of partial migration in fishes is reviewed. Firstly, the ultimate and proximate drivers of partial migration are reflected upon: what ecological factors can shape the evolution of migratory dimorphism? How is partial migration maintained over evolutionary timescales? What proximate mechanisms determine whether an individual is migratory or remains resident? Following this, the consequences of partial migration are considered, in an ecological and evolutionary context, and also in an applied sense. Here it is argued that understanding the concept of partial migration is crucial for fisheries and ecosystem managers, and can provide information for conservation strategies. The review concludes with a reflection on the future opportunities in this field, and the avenues of research that are likely to be fruitful to shed light on the enduring puzzle of partial migration in fishes.

Fishes show a remarkable diversity of shapes which have been associated with their swimming abilities and anti-predator adaptations. The crucian carp (Carassius carassius) provides an extreme example of phenotypic plasticity in body shape which makes it a unique model organism for evaluating the relationship between body form and function in fishes. In crucian carp, a deep body is induced by the presence of pike (Esox lucius), and this results in lower vulnerability to gape-limited predators, such as pike itself. Here, we demonstrate that deep-bodied crucian carp attain higher speed, acceleration and turning rate during antipredator responses than shallow-bodied crucian carp. Therefore, a predator-induced morphology in crucian carp enhances their escape locomotor performance. The deep-bodied carp also show higher percentage of muscle mass. Therefore, their superior performance in escape swimming may be due to a combination of higher muscle power and higher thrust.

Migration is a common phenomenon in many organisms, terrestrial as well as aquatic, and considerable effort has been spent to understand the evolution of migratory behaviour and its consequences for population and community dynamics. In aquatic systems, studies on migration have mainly been focused on commercially important fish species, such as salmon and trout. However, seasonal mass-migrations may occur also among other freshwater fish, e.g. in cyprinids that leave lakes and migrate into streams and wetlands in the fall and return back to the lake in spring. In a conceptual model, we hypothesized that this is an adaptive behaviour in response to seasonal changes in predation (P) and growth (G) and that migrating fish change habitat so as to minimise the ratio between predation mortality and growth rate (P/G). Estimates from bioenergetic modelling showed that seasonal changes in the ratio between predator consumption rate and prey growth rate followed the predictions from the conceptual model and also gave more precise predictions for the timing of the habitat change. By quantifying the migration of more than 1800 individually marked fish, we showed that actual migration patterns followed predictions with a remarkable accuracy, suggesting that migration patterns have evolved in response to seasonally fluctuating trade-offs between predator avoidance and foraging gains. Thus, the conceptual model provides a mechanistic understanding to mass–migration in prey fish. Further, we also show that the dominant prey fish is actually absent from the lake during a major part of the year, which should have strong implications for the dynamics of the lake ecosystem through direct and indirect food-web interactions.

In order to disentangle if and when resource supply and adult and young-of-the-year (0+) fish predation affect zooplankton dynamics during spring, we monitored zooplankton during three consecutive years in a lake in southern Sweden. We also experimentally assessed 0+ fish predation rates and estimated changes in predation rates of adult fish on zooplankton. Decline in abundances of large-sized zooplankters in early spring was not caused by 0+ fish predation. Instead, this decline was most likely a combined result of size-selective predation from adult fish (stationary in the lake and from those returning from surrounding streams) and competition for diminishing algal food resources. On the other hand, the decline in medium-sized zooplankton in the lake during spring was strongly affected by 0+ fish. Hence, during spring, zooplankton are facing predation both from adult fish selecting large prey and from 0+ fish, which start feeding on small-sized prey and eventually switch to larger. Neither predation by different ontogenetic stages of fish (adult and 0+) nor resource supply shape the zooplankton spring dynamics, but rather they affect the timing and strength of these events. 0+ cyprinids tend to have stronger effect on zooplankton dynamics than other taxa of 0+ fish. A combination of predation from adult and 0+ fish during spring is the main mechanism behind the crash of the zooplankton community, which in many lakes leads to the termination of the clear-water phase.The spring, with its rapidly increasing temperature, is an important period for the development of the zooplankton summer community in temperate regions, mirrored in dramatic fluctuations in population densities. These conspicuous spring fluctuations are due to changes in reproductive rates and resource supply but also to increased feeding rates from predators. The total predation rate on zooplankton may be divided into several components. First, there is predation from adult fish present in the lake year-round, and the seasonal fluctuations in their predation rate is driven by temperature (Lessmark 1983) and is generally most intense on larger zooplankton size classes (Brooks and Dodson 1965). Second, a dramatic change in the predation rate occurs with the hatching and recruitment of young-of-the-year fish (0+) in the spring. They start their life by feeding on small zooplankton but are within a few weeks able to feed on larger size classes (Mills and Forney 1983;Mehner and Thiel 1999). Thus, smaller size classes of zooplankton should suffer from 0+ predation earlier in the season than larger ones. It has previously been suggested that 0+ predation drives succession in the zooplankton community (Cryer et al. 1986;Gliwicz and Pijanowska 1989), whereas other studies have concluded that 0+ fish predation probably is too weak to explain zooplankton spring dynamics (Cushing 1983;Boersma et al. 1996) and that instead other processes, such as competition and resource supply (i.e., bottom-up processes) are more important. In a review, Mehner and Th...

Laboratory and field experiments were used to investigate how different marking procedures, with 23 mm PIT (passive integrated transponders) -tags, affected mortality, body condition and tag expulsion in small roach Rutilus rutilus and rudd Scardinus erythrophthalmus (117 to 163 mm total length). In a laboratory experiment mortality was low ( 6%) and only occurred among fishes that had their incision closed with sutures. The latter also had a specific growth rate that tended to be lower than the fish tagged without sutures. The different marking procedures did not adversely affect the body condition of fishes either in the laboratory experiment (after 37 days) or in the field experiment (up to 369 days). No tag expulsions were observed among laboratory fishes PIT-tagged without sutures. Marking without the use of sutures to close the incision, appears to be the most appropriate PIT tagging procedure for small cyprinids. # 2005 The Fisheries Society of the British Isles

Partial migration, in which a fraction of a population migrate and the rest remain resident, occurs in an extensive range of species and can have powerful ecological consequences. The question of what drives differences in individual migratory tendency is a contentious one. It has been shown that the timing of partial migration is based upon a trade-off between seasonal fluctuations in predation risk and growth potential. Phenotypic variation in either individual predation risk or growth potential should thus mediate the strength of the trade-off and ultimately predict patterns of partial migration at the individual level (i.e. which individuals migrate and which remain resident). We provide cross-population empirical support for the importance of one component of this model-individual predation risk-in predicting partial migration in wild populations of bream Abramis brama, a freshwater fish. Smaller, high-risk individuals migrate with a higher probability than larger, low-risk individuals, and we suggest that predation risk maintains size-dependent partial migration in this system.