Skip Spawning and Recruitment in a Brood Guarding Species, Florida Bass

Annual reproductive effort of fish populations is difficult to quantify but has important implications for understanding recruitment processes.  The general measure of stock used in recruit modeling assumes a relationship between spawning stock abundance and eggs spawned.  We estimated Florida Bass Micropterus floridanus adult abundance, the number of broods produced, and the number of age-1 recruits annually over four years for a series of four lakes in north central Florida.  Annual reproductive effort (the estimated number of broods produced) varied among lakes and within lakes across years.  Three lakes had a proportion of non-reproductive adults in each year.  The proportion of adults that were non-reproductive varied from moderate where 40 to 80% of adults likely did not produce a brood to severe where 95% or more of adults likely did not spawn.  In one lake in all years there was evidence that adults produced multiple broods (range 1.4 – 3.7 broods/spawner).  Thus, reproductive output of the populations was not related to spawner abundance and did not provide a good measure with which to evaluate annual recruitment. Alternative measures, i.e., the number of broods produced and the number of successful broods provided more appropriate measures with which to evaluate recruit relationships.