Inferring precocial Chinook Salmon production through single‐parentage assignments

Abstract

ObjectiveParentage analysis is a routine methodology in fisheries research, but study systems exist where it is impractical to sample both parents. The ability to reliably assign offspring to a single parent is beneficial in these situations. We applied single‐parentage assignments to a naturally spawning population of Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha to quantify production of anadromous returns by unsampled precocial males.MethodsWe used an approach that focused on two important aspects of parentage analyses: (1) addressing the presence of family structure within the set of sampled parents and (2) controlling for false‐positive and false‐negative assignments.ResultResults indicated that 30% of reproductively successful males were precocial males, which produced 20% of the returning anadromous offspring.ConclusionThis study provides a framework for applying single‐parent assignments in a salmonid study system while explicitly addressing sources of assignment errors.