Effects of low temperature on growth and metabolism of larval green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) across early ontogeny.

Abstract

Southern Distinct Population Segment (sDPS) green sturgeon spawn solely in one stretch of the Sacramento River in California. Management of this spawning habitat is complicated by cold water temperature requirements for the conservation of winter-run Chinook salmon. This study assessed whether low incubation and rearing temperatures resulted in carryover effects across embryo to early juvenile life stages on scaling relationships in growth and metabolism in northern DPS green sturgeon used as a proxy for sDPS green sturgeon. Fish were incubated and reared at 11 °C and 15 °C, with a subset experiencing a reciprocal temperature transfer post-hatch, to assess recovery from cold incubation or to simulate a cold-water dam release which would chill rearing larvae. Growth and metabolic rate of embryos and larvae were measured to 118 days post hatch. Reciprocal temperature transfers revealed a greater effect of low temperature exposure during larval rearing rather than during egg incubation. While 11 °C eggs hatched at a smaller length, log-transformed length-weight relationships showed that these differences in developmental trajectory dissipated as individuals achieved juvenile morphology. However, considerable size-at-age differences persisted between rearing temperatures, with 15 °C fish requiring 60 days post-hatch to achieve 1 g in mass, whereas 11 °C fish required 120 days to achieve 1 g, resulting in fish of the same age at the completion of the experiment with a ca. 37-fold difference in weight. Consequently, our study suggests that cold rearing temperatures have far more consequential downstream effects than cold embryo incubation temperatures. Growth delays from 11 °C rearing temperatures would greatly increase the period of vulnerability to predation in larval green sturgeon. The scaling relationship between log-transformed whole-body metabolism and mass exhibited a steeper slope and thus an increased oxygen requirement with size in 11 °C reared fish, potentially indicating an energetically unsustainable situation. Understanding how cold temperatures affect green sturgeon ontogeny is necessary to refine our larval recruitment estimations for this threatened species.