Young Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) learn migration behavior by joining up with older fish, according to a new paper co-authored by Puget Sound Institute Lead Ecosystem Ecologist Tessa Francis. The paper, published this month in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, showed how this behavior leads to greater spatial variability in biomass, and that commercial fishing could disproportionately affect some herring populations.
Alec D MacCall, Tessa B Francis, André E Punt, Margaret C Siple, Derek R Armitage, Jaclyn S Cleary, Sherri C Dressel, R Russ Jones, Harvey Kitka, Lynn C Lee, Phillip S Levin, Jim McIsaac, Daniel K Okamoto, Melissa Poe, Steve Reifenstuhl, Jörn O Schmidt, Andrew O Shelton, Jennifer J Silver, Thomas F Thornton, Rudi Voss, John Woodruff, Handling editor: Ken Andersen. (2018). A heuristic model of socially learned migration behaviour exhibits distinctive spatial and reproductive dynamics. ICES Journal of Marine Science. fsy091. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsy091