Growth Rates and Size Distributions of First-year Smallmouth Bass Populations: Some Conclusions from Experiments and a Model
- 1 March 1979
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society
- Vol. 108 (2) , 137-141
- https://doi.org/10.1577/1548-8659(1979)108<137:grasdo>2.0.co;2
Abstract
Growth rates of populations of 1st yr smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieui Lacepede) were studied during the 1st few weeks of life at temperatures ranging from 15.2-32.5.degree. C. The average length of fish in each group increased linearly with time, t, in a range from 10-30 mm. The variances about these mean lengths increased approximately as t2. A partial differential equation model can be useful in expressing the dynamics of populations in which size distributions are taken into consideration. This type of model shows that both observed length-versus-time phenomena are expected if the rates of increase of length of fish are independent of length and that these rates for individual fish are normally distributed about some mean rate of growth. The variance of individual growth rates needed to produce the observed length-versus-time data can be calculated from the model.This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: