Open AccessSurvival of juvenile white mullet Mugil curema (Mugilidae) in a coastal lagoon.
Author(s) -
Casimiro Quiñónez Velázquez,
Juan Ramón López-Olmos,
Carlos Iván Pérez-Quiñónez
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
cicimar oceánides
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2448-9123
pISSN - 1870-0713
DOI - 10.37543/oceanides.v30i1.142
Subject(s) - mullet , mugil , juvenile , biology , fishery , hatching , larva , zoology , ecology , fish <actinopterygii>
The hatching date frequency distribution (HDFD) of juvenile white mullet (Mugil curema) sampledat monthly intervals in the coastal lagoon Ensenada de La Paz, B.C.S., México from May 1997 to May 1998 was reconstructed for different age intervals and corrected for differences in the accumulated mortality. The ratio of the HDFD at a given age to the HDFD at an earlier age was used as an index of the relative survival of juveniles grouped into 14-day hatch-date cohorts. The results show that the white mullet spawns during the whole year inBahía de La Paz, with the highest survival of larvae from October to February. Variations of the relative survival of the age groups were correlated significantly to the variations in growth. A fast growth resulted in high survival while a slow growth yielded low and high survival. The latter was observed when the juveniles used the lagoonafter 40-days-old, indicating that the area is used mainly as a refuge. The return to the coastal area can explain the decrease of juveniles older than 80 days in the lagoon.