Large female northern pike (Esox lucius) do not connect spawning areas across a lagoon network in the southern Baltic Sea

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 3 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 3 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Individual variation in movement is fundamental to understanding population structure and dynamics in coastal fish. Here, we examine size- and sex-specific patterns of movement, spatial connectivity, and spawning site fidelity in coastal northern pike (Esox lucius) across and within years in a spatially extensive lagoon network in the southern Baltic Sea. We analysed capture-mark-recapture data for 666 tagged pike and acoustic tracking data from 318 individuals, spanning total lengths from 28 cm to 126 cm. Neither mark-recapture nor telemetry data revealed a relationship between individual body length and sex, distance between capture and recapture, connectivity, maximum horizontal displacement, and among-year spawning site fidelity. Instead, spatial connectivity and movement ranges were significantly correlated between years and statistically repeatable, indicating stable inter-individual variation in movement behaviour independent of body size or sex. These patterns point to a population in which movement roles are not structured by size or sex, but rather by stable individual-level differences in behavioural types. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2G91F Life Sciences bet hedging, BOFFFF, site connectivity, spawning, size-selective harvesting Published: 2025-04-25 05:33 Last Updated: 2026-04-01 20:48 CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Data and Code Availability Statement: The data are available in the European Tracking Network repository: Dhellemmes F, Arlinghaus R (2021) Boddenhecht telemetry dataset. https://marineinfo.org/id/dataset/7859 Language: English