Evidence of local short‐distance spawning migration of tropical freshwater eels, and implications for the evolution of freshwater eel migration

Freshwater eels have fascinated biologists for centuries due to the spectacular long‐distance migrations between the eels’ freshwater habitats and their spawning areas far out in the ocean and the mysteries of their ecology. The spawning areas of Atlantic eels and Japanese eel were located far offsh...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology and evolution 2014-10, Vol.4 (19), p.3812-3819
Main Author: Arai, Takaomi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ancestral form
Anguilla
Aquatic habitats
catadromy
Coastal waters
Downstream effects
Ecology
Eels
Fresh water
Freshwater environments
Freshwater lakes
Gonads
Gyres
Habitats
Hemispheres
Islands
maturation
migration
Original Research
Phylogeny
Rivers
Spawning
Spawning migrations
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Summary:Freshwater eels have fascinated biologists for centuries due to the spectacular long‐distance migrations between the eels’ freshwater habitats and their spawning areas far out in the ocean and the mysteries of their ecology. The spawning areas of Atlantic eels and Japanese eel were located far offshore in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, respectively, and their reproduction took place thousands of kilometers away from their growth habitats. Phylogenetic studies have revealed that freshwater eels originated in the Indonesian region. However, remarkably little is known about the life histories of tropical freshwater eels despite the fact that tropical eels are key to understanding the nature of primitive forms of catadromous migration. This study found spawning‐condition tropical freshwater eels in Lake Poso, central Sulawesi, Indonesia, with considerably high gonadosomatic index values and with histologically fully developed gonads. This study provides the first evidence that under certain conditions, freshwater eels have conditions that are immediately able to spawn even in river downstream. The results suggest that, in contrast to the migrations made by the Atlantic and Japanese eels, freshwater eels originally migrated only short distances of
ISSN:2045-7758
2045-7758
DOI:10.1002/ece3.1245