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A Tool for Age Determination
Author(s) -
Cyterski M. J.,
Spangler G. R.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
north american journal of fisheries management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.587
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1548-8675
pISSN - 0275-5947
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8675(1996)016<0403:atfad>2.3.co;2
Subject(s) - chronology , concordance , fish <actinopterygii> , matching (statistics) , statistics , population , visual inspection , mathematics , geography , demography , biology , archaeology , fishery , bioinformatics , sociology
A master growth chronology for walleye Stizostedion vitreum was developed to complement age determination by hard‐part analysis. A master chronology documents year‐to‐year fluctuations of growth in body size of individuals in the population in response to environmental conditions, as inferred through the magnitudes of their growth increments. The master chronology was constructed by using a linear growth model that separated measured growth increments on reliably aged fish into age‐specific and environmental components. Year‐classes of a sample of unknown‐aged older fish were predicted by three methods: visual inspection of their scales, matching their individual growth histories to the master chronology through an algebraic concordance sum of squares method, and matching the individual histories to the master chronology by correlation. The results of the algebraic concordance sum of squares method corresponded more closely to the results of visual inspection than did the results of the simple correlation analysis. When patently implausible year‐class assignments were ignored, the concordance sum of squares fit agreed with the visual inspection fit for 17 of 18 fish.