Publication
Accelerometer-derived activity correlates with volitional swimming speed in lake sturgeon (Acipenserfulvescens)
Publisher:
Canadian Science Publishing
Date:
08-2015
DOI:
10.1139/CJZ-2014-0271
Abstract: Quantifying fine-scale locomotor behaviours associated with different activities is challenging for free-swimming fish. Biologging and biotelemetry tools can help address this problem. An open channel flume was used to generate volitional swimming speed (U s ) estimates of cultured lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens Rafinesque, 1817) and these were paired with simultaneously recorded accelerometer-derived metrics of activity obtained from three types of data-storage tags. This study examined whether a predictive relationship could be established between four different activity metrics (tail-beat frequency (TBF), tail-beat acceleration litude (TBAA), overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA), and vectorial dynamic body acceleration (VeDBA)) and the swimming speed of A. fulvescens. Volitional U s of sturgeon ranged from 0.48 to 2.70 m·s −1 (0.51–3.18 body lengths (BL)·s −1 ). Swimming speed increased linearly with all accelerometer-derived metrics, and when all tag types were combined, U s increased 0.46 BL·s −1 for every 1 Hz increase in TBF, and 0.94, 0.61, and 0.94 BL·s −1 for every 1g increase in TBAA, ODBA, and VeDBA, respectively. Predictive relationships varied among tag types and tag-specific parameter estimates of U s are presented for all metrics. This use of acceleration data-storage tags demonstrated their applicability for the field quantification of sturgeon swimming speed.