Sex-related growth of European eel, Anguilla anguilla, with focus on median silver eel age

Abstract

Silver eels, Anguilla anguilla, migrating downstream were monitored for 15 years since being stocked in 1980 as cultured fingerlings in a Swedish lake. Females were larger than males in each separate year, but mean growth rate was higher in males than in females. This discrepancy was due to different age distributions, with 64.5% of the males migrating after four or five growing seasons, while 86.3% of the females grew for 10-15 seasons before migration. Otolith length in the glass eel stage was independent of sex, and it was not correlated with year of migration. With focus on median year of migration, otolith lengths after one, two, and three growing seasons were significantly larger in males than in females. This was mainly due to a higher otolith length increase during the first growing season, i.e., before the eels were stocked in the lake. These results are inconsistent with the view that female eels generally grow faster than males.