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Swimming Performance and Behavior of Golden Shiner, Notemigonus crysoleucas, While Schooling

1998; American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; Volume: 1998; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1447443

1938-5110

Ginny L. Boyd, Glenn R. Parsons,

Marine and fisheries research

Many studies have examined swimming performance in fishes (Weihs, 1975; Beamish, 1978; Parsons and Sylvester, 1992) concentrating on the performance of an individual fish swimming alone. Despite the volume of information concerning swimming performance, very little has been done on the performance of individual fish while schooling. Some researchers have suggested that the fundamental reason fish school is to obtain a hydrodynamic advantage (Weihs, 1975; Breder, 1976; Partridge et al., 1983). However, others have suggested that schooling is a behavioral adaptation (Shaw, 1960; Olsen, 1964; Ashley, et al. 1993). Pitcher and Partridge (1979) reviewed the behavioral advantages of shoaling or grouping of fishes for social reasons. Weihs (1975) suggested three different mechanisms that could enable fish to gain a hydrodynamic advantage while schooling. Fish could reduce their relative velocities by utilizing vortices generated within the school, improve thrust efficiency by using other members of the school when swimming close together, and utilize wakes of neighboring fish to balance their negative buoyancy by a decrease in induced drag. These advantages are obtained when fish are swimming in a diamond-shaped pattern on the same horizontal plane as their neighbors. However, Pitcher and Partridge (1979) found that in only four of 659 cases was a fish found in the appropriate position to take advantage of vortices.