Effects Of Food Availability On Metabolism,Growth,Behaviour,and Their Relationships In A Triploid Carp

Metabolism,behavior and growth are highly flexible in fish species while the inter-individual differences in them have been reported repeatable across time and context,a phenomenon is deemed to be evolutionary and ecological significant.It has been long suggested that all of them are co-varied with each other while their relationship are quite controversial.To test whether metabolism,behavior,growth and their possible relationship varied with food availability,we selected sterile triploid carp as experimental animal and investigated the metabolic(SMR),growth performance and personality traits(activity,exploration and boldness)of 80 juvenile individuals before and after 25 d of rearing fed either once or twice a day(apparent satiation).The main findings of this study are as follows:(1)Inter-individual difference of SMR in two groups showed highly repeatability across the experiment period while twice-fed fish showed significantly higher SMR than once-fed fish after 25 d of rearing.(2)Twice-fed group showed higher feeding rate,lower feeding efficiency but similar SGR than once-fed group.(3)All personality traits were highly correlated with each other while food availability showed no significant effect on any variables.(4)Both boldness and exploration were highly repeatable across experiment in once-and(or)twice-fed group.(5)SMR and personality traits were positive correlated with feeding rate but no correlated with feeding efficiency or growth rate in once-fed group,whereas,such relationships no more existed in twice-fed group due to the surplus food supple.The results show that:(1)The SMR is highly repeatable;and it was positively correlated with the feeding rate,which was not correlated with feeding efficiency.There is no correlation between growth rate and personality.(2)Difference of food availability showed profound effect on SMR,whereas it showed no significant effect on the difference of the growth rate and behavioral traits.(3)The growth performance and personality traits were significantly correlated in once-fed group but not in twice-fed group.