Project
Estimating stream-specific contributions to sea lamprey spawning runs
Dispersal throughout the sea lamprey’s life cycle remains poorly understood. Population genetic studies indicate that some\r\nindividuals are capable of dispersing basin-wide, whereas physical tagging studies have found that the majority of marked\r\nindividuals were recaptured in large systems, often near their natal stream. Pedigree reconstruction is an innovative tool that\r\ncan be used to understand lifetime sea lamprey dispersal between their natal stream and spawning habitat by identifying\r\nsibling relationships between spawning adults and previously sampled larvae. In the proposed study, we aim to leverage a\r\nnewly created GLFC-funded genotyping panel that is optimized for sea lamprey pedigree reconstruction to identify the natal\r\norigins of spawning adult sea lamprey, thereby also providing a means of gauging stream-specific productivity. By\r\nreconstructing sibling relationships within combined genotypes from adult lamprey from the 2023 and 2024 spawning runs\r\nand existing larvae from 14 streams dating back to 2019, we will answer three research questions: (Q1) what is the frequency\r\nof adult siblings within and among streams, (Q2) what is the frequency of sibling relationships across life stages, which\r\nallows us to assign adults to their natal stream, and (Q3) how many adults we can assign to cohort?