Abstract
Fish swimming capacity is a key life history trait critical to many aspects of their ecology. U-crit (critical) swimming speeds provide a robust, repeatable relative measure of swimming speed that can serve as a useful surrogate for other measures of swimming performance. Here we collate and make available one the most comprehensive datasets on U-crit swimming abilities of tropical marine fish larvae and pelagic juveniles, most of which are reef associated as adults. The dataset includes U-crit speed measurements for settlement stage fishes across a large range of species and families obtained mostly from field specimens collected in light traps and crest nets; and the development of swimming abilities throughout ontogeny for a range of species using reared larvae. In nearly all instances, the size of the individual was available, and in many cases, data include other morphological measurements (e.g. “propulsive area”) useful for predicting swimming capacity. We hope these data prove useful for further studies of larval swimming performance and other broader syntheses.
Highlights
Background & SummaryMost tropical teleost fishes that are demersal as adults have a pelagic larval phase, in which eggs and very young larvae are swept away from spawning sites by ocean currents into open waters, where they develop into late-stage larvae and pelagic juveniles that must find suitable habitat for settlement and recruitment into the adult population[1].The pelagic phase of reef associated fishes represents an ecologically distinct phase in their life cycle, that presents unique demands on their swimming abilities
The data are collected from five locations, including: South Caicos Island (Turks and Caicos Islands, Caribbean - the School for Field Studies facilities (TCI)), Green Island or Magnetic Island, Lizard Island (Great Barrier Reef, Australia - Lizard Island Research Station (LI)), Calabash Caye (Turneffe Islands Atoll, Belize - BLZ), and Moorea, Society Islands (MOR) (Table 1)
Some individuals were kept in the laboratory for up to 2 days to study changes in swimming speed associated with settlement, and here the post-settlement status of the larvae was recorded in the field “stage” in the “fish_id_dat” data table
Summary
Background & SummaryMost tropical teleost fishes that are demersal as adults have a pelagic larval phase, in which eggs and very young larvae are swept away from spawning sites by ocean currents into open waters, where they develop into late-stage larvae and pelagic juveniles that must find suitable habitat for settlement and recruitment into the adult population[1].The pelagic phase of reef associated fishes represents an ecologically distinct phase in their life cycle, that presents unique demands on their swimming abilities. We publish the data that underpin much of the U-crit based publications on tropical larval and settlement stage fish swimming speeds.
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