Short-distance spawning migration of tropical freshwater eels.

Abstract

The freshwater eels have fascinated biologists because of their spectacular long-distance migrations between their freshwater habitats and their spawning areas far out in the ocean (1, 2, 3). Recent progress on the molecular phylogeny of freshwater eels suggests that they originated in the tropics (4), and information on the reproductive ecology and recruitment of tropical species will provide new insight into the evolution of the spawning migration of the freshwater eels (5, 6). However, the larvae (leptocephali) of the many sympatric tropical species are morphologically similar (7), so they are impossible to identify, and their spawning areas are thus virtually unknown. Recently, however, we have collected small leptocephali from around Sulawesi, Indonesia, and have used species-specific genetic markers to identify them as larvae of Anguilla celebesensis and A. borne-ensis, which provides the first definitive information about the general spawning areas of these tropical eels. Moreover, the discovery of a spawning area of A. celebesensis in Tomini Bay and the presence of small specimens of two species in the Celebes Sea indicate that, in contrast to the long migrations made by temperate eels, tropical eels make much shorter migrations to spawn in areas near their freshwater habitats. This difference in migratory behavior may reflect an evolutionary cline among freshwater eels that extends from tropical to temperate regions.