Small fish holding system

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The capacity of organisms to react to rapidly changing environments depends on genetic and non-genetic factors. Along with field studies, experimental trials are useful to disentangle the contribution of genetic, environmental, maternal, and developmental factors contributing to the variation in traits enabling organisms to cope with dynamic natural conditions. The investigators involved in this proposal study fish that thrive in dynamic ecosystems where salinity is of major importance. Experiments will help parting the relative influence of environmental and genetic factors in members of Fundulus spp. comprising an unusual array of reproductive types (pure species, sexual and asexual hybrids) as well as determining the effect of early life environmental conditions on fish species typical of the St. Lawrence middle esturary such as Microgadus tomcod (tomcod).The equipment to be purchased with this grant consists of two fish holding systems that will permit experimental work aiming to understand how low, high, or varying salinity levels affect phenotypes, fitness and life strategies of several fish species. Each system is composed of a rack holding 10 large (90 L) and 30 small (2.8 L) self-cleaning tanks. These are supplied with sterilized bacteria-filtered water delivered by pumps mixing appropriate quantities of fresh and salt water to control salinity. Salinity can be kept constant or it can vary according to a tidal cycle. Two units are needed to cover the natural range of salinity where estuarine fishes thrive since lower and upper salinity ranges require different bacteria. This equipment will be kept at the wet lab facility of Université Laval and will be fully accessible to undergraduate and graduate students realizing experiments in the context of B.Sc. or graduate research project in biology.