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Rhythmic activity of migrating juvenile American eels Anguilla rostrata

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2009

Gail S. Wippelhauser  and
James D. McCleave
Gail S. Wippelhauser
Affiliation:
Migratory Fish Research Institute and Department of Zoology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469, U.S.A.
James D. McCleave
Affiliation:
Migratory Fish Research Institute and Department of Zoology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469, U.S.A.
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Abstract

Glass eels of the American eel Anguilla rostrata (Lesueur) utilize selective tidal stream transport, a series of semidiurnal vertical migrations in phase with the tide, to migrate up the Penobscot River estuary, Maine, U.S.A., in the spring. Glass eels, freshly collected during their migration, exhibited rhythmic activity with circatidal periodicities when tested in groups in the presence of a water current under constant conditions in the laboratory. Freshly collected groups of eels which had already completed their migration through tidal water did not exhibit circatidal activity rhythms under the same conditions. The activity rhythms of groups of eels freshly caught in tidal water appeared to be entrained by a 12.5 h cycle of water current reversals, but not by a 10.0 h cycle of current reversals. In other entrainment experiments water collected on flood and ebb tides was alternately added to the experimental tanks every 5.0 h. Under these conditions groups of eels freshly caught in tidal water did not display any rhythmic activity. Only 2 of 100 glass eels, freshly collected from tidal and non-tidal water, which were tested individually in static tanks, exhibited rhythmic activity. The activity rhythms would allow an eel to time its vertical migrations in the estuary despite varying environmental conditions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , February 1988 , pp. 81 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 1988

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