Single generation exposure to a captive diet: a primer for domestication selection in a salmonid fish?

Abstract

Millions of wild animals in captivity are reared on diets that differ in their uptake and composition from natural conditions. Few studies have investigated whether such novel diets elicit unintentional domestication selection in captive rearing and supplementation programs. In highly fecund salmonid fishes, natural and captive mortality is highest in the first few months of exogenous feeding. This high early mortality might be a potent driver of unintentional selection because wild fish normally forage on live prey whereas they are fed almost exclusively pellet feed in captivity: fish that do not adapt pellet feed well under captive conditions experience reduced growth and/or die. We tested this hypothesis by generating a large number of families from F1 captive and wild fish originating from the same three populations and then rearing them each on pellet and natural, live, drifting feed for three months at the beginning of exogenous feeding. We found that captive fish of every population grew faster than wild fish in all diet treatments. Populations exhibited an idiosyncratic response to diet treatment, with two populations exhibiting faster growth on a pellet diet versus the natural diet but another population exhibiting similar growth in both diet treatments. Fish exposed to a natural diet also exhibited higher survival relative to those given a pellet diet. Captive and wild fish did not differ in survival, regardless of population of origin. Overall, we found evidence that rapid domestication selection associated with a single generation exposure to a novel captive diet generates genetically-based changes to individual fitness (e.g., growth and survival) in a wild fish.