Endangered species

Demography

Biology

Zoology

Catfish

Fishing

Sociology

Overfishing

Fish migration

Habitat

Predation

Fishery

Population

Spawn (biology)

Ecology

Lamprey

Fish <Actinopterygii>

Petromyzon

Scientific Reports

Sea lamprey ( Petromyzon marinus ) is a unique jawless vertebrate among the most primitive of all living vertebrates. This migratory fish is endangered in much of its native area due to dams, overfishing, pollution, and habitat loss. An introduced predator, the European catfish ( Silurus glanis ), is now widespread in Western and Southern European freshwaters, adding a new threat for sea lamprey migrating into freshwater to spawn. Here, we use a new prototype predation tag coupled with RFID telemetry on 49 individuals from one of the largest sea lamprey European populations (Southwestern France) to quantify the risk of predation for adult sea lampreys during its spawning migration in rivers with large populations of European catfish. We found that at least 80% of tagged sea lampreys (39 among 49) were preyed upon within one month, and that 50% of the released lampreys were rapidly consumed on average 8 days after tagging. This very high predation rate suggests that the European catfish represents a supplement...

High predation of native sea lamprey during spawning migration