Fine scale relationships between sex, life history, and dispersal of masu salmon

Abstract

Identifying the patterns and processes driving dispersal is critical for understanding population structure and dynamics. In many organisms, sex-biased dispersal is related to the type of mating system. Considerably, less is known about the influence of life-history variability on dispersal. Here we investigated patterns of dispersal in masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou) to evaluate influences of sex and life history on dispersal. As expected, assignment tests and isolation by distance analysis revealed that dispersal of marine-migratory masu salmon was male-biased. However, dispersal of resident and migratory males did not follow our expectation and marine-migratory individuals dispersed more than residents. This may be because direct competition between marine-migratory and resident males is weak or that the cost of dispersal is smaller for marine-migratory individuals. This study revealed that both sex and migratory life-history influence patterns of dispersal at a local scale in masu salmon.