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First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea

The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is critically endangered (according to the most recent IUCN assessment) and has suffered a 95% decline in recruitment since the 1980s, attributed in part to factors occurring during the marine phases of its life-cycle. As an adult, the European eel undertakes the...

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Autores principales: Wright, Rosalind M., Piper, Adam T., Aarestrup, Kim, Azevedo, Jose M. N., Cowan, George, Don, Andy, Gollock, Matthew, Rodriguez Ramallo, Sara, Velterop, Randolph, Walker, Alan, Westerberg, Håkan, Righton, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9562336/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36229475
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-19248-8
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author Wright, Rosalind M.
Piper, Adam T.
Aarestrup, Kim
Azevedo, Jose M. N.
Cowan, George
Don, Andy
Gollock, Matthew
Rodriguez Ramallo, Sara
Velterop, Randolph
Walker, Alan
Westerberg, Håkan
Righton, David
author_facet Wright, Rosalind M.
Piper, Adam T.
Aarestrup, Kim
Azevedo, Jose M. N.
Cowan, George
Don, Andy
Gollock, Matthew
Rodriguez Ramallo, Sara
Velterop, Randolph
Walker, Alan
Westerberg, Håkan
Righton, David
author_sort Wright, Rosalind M.
collection PubMed
description The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is critically endangered (according to the most recent IUCN assessment) and has suffered a 95% decline in recruitment since the 1980s, attributed in part to factors occurring during the marine phases of its life-cycle. As an adult, the European eel undertakes the longest spawning migration of all anguillid eels, a distance of 5000 to 10,000 km across the Atlantic Ocean to the Sargasso Sea. However, despite the passage of almost 100 years since Johannes Schmidt proposed the Sargasso Sea as the breeding place of European eels on the basis of larval surveys, no eggs or spawning adults have ever been sampled there to confirm this. Fundamental questions therefore remain about the oceanic migration of adult eels, including navigation mechanisms, the routes taken, timings of arrival, swimming speed and spawning locations. We attached satellite tags to 26 eels from rivers in the Azores archipelago and tracked them for periods between 40 and 366 days at speeds between 3 and 12 km day(−1), and provide the first direct evidence of adult European eels reaching their presumed breeding place in the Sargasso Sea.
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spelling pubmed-95623362022-10-15 First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea Wright, Rosalind M. Piper, Adam T. Aarestrup, Kim Azevedo, Jose M. N. Cowan, George Don, Andy Gollock, Matthew Rodriguez Ramallo, Sara Velterop, Randolph Walker, Alan Westerberg, Håkan Righton, David Sci Rep Article The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is critically endangered (according to the most recent IUCN assessment) and has suffered a 95% decline in recruitment since the 1980s, attributed in part to factors occurring during the marine phases of its life-cycle. As an adult, the European eel undertakes the longest spawning migration of all anguillid eels, a distance of 5000 to 10,000 km across the Atlantic Ocean to the Sargasso Sea. However, despite the passage of almost 100 years since Johannes Schmidt proposed the Sargasso Sea as the breeding place of European eels on the basis of larval surveys, no eggs or spawning adults have ever been sampled there to confirm this. Fundamental questions therefore remain about the oceanic migration of adult eels, including navigation mechanisms, the routes taken, timings of arrival, swimming speed and spawning locations. We attached satellite tags to 26 eels from rivers in the Azores archipelago and tracked them for periods between 40 and 366 days at speeds between 3 and 12 km day(−1), and provide the first direct evidence of adult European eels reaching their presumed breeding place in the Sargasso Sea. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-10-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9562336/ /pubmed/36229475 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-19248-8 Text en © Crown 2022, corrected publication 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Wright, Rosalind M.
Piper, Adam T.
Aarestrup, Kim
Azevedo, Jose M. N.
Cowan, George
Don, Andy
Gollock, Matthew
Rodriguez Ramallo, Sara
Velterop, Randolph
Walker, Alan
Westerberg, Håkan
Righton, David
First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea
title First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea
title_full First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea
title_fullStr First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea
title_full_unstemmed First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea
title_short First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea
title_sort first direct evidence of adult european eels migrating to their breeding place in the sargasso sea
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9562336/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36229475
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-19248-8
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