Abstract
Sea lice are important copepod ectoparasites in salmonid aquaculture. Individual lice count has moderate heritability under challenge testing and has been suggested as a selection tool for parasite control. Recent studies indicate that parasite attraction is a major underlying cause of genetic variation in lice count, which is likely to cause within-group variation in parasite load, but its potential for group-level protection is unknown. Results from an ongoing divergent selection experiment are presented, with two salmon strains divergently selected for low/high pathogen burden. Under common-garden testing, the strains were extremely different. However, when tested separately using standard protocols, the difference was not significant. An alternative testing protocol with flow-through tanks was also applied, offering less ‘favourable’ conditions for the parasites, indicating some group-level protection (P=0.10). Further research is needed to assess the potential of lice attraction as a tool for parasite control under large-scale field conditions.
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