‘Wild-like' Mate Choice As a Means to Increase Hatchery Fitness

Although evidence accrues that salmon hatchery offspring are less fit than their wild spawning counterparts even for wild-integrated hatchery programs, the actual mechanism behind this fitness difference remains a mystery.   Published work from a long-term study using genetic pedigree among coho salmon enabled full lifetime fitness observations of natural and hatchery origin fish when both spawned in a wild context.  Greater reproductive success for natural origin fish was demonstrated to result from mate choice finesse not apparent among fish of hatchery origin.   We thus question what aspects of the genome we might interrogate to determine how wild fish formed mating partnerships that were more successful.  How then could this information be used to guide pairing of candidates in a hatchery to emulate ‘wild-like’ mate choice options without risking negative consequences of artificial selection?  Once this is figured out, we are keen to conduct a multi-generation experiment among coho and Chinook salmon at three different hatcheries to determine if such a strategy may alleviate hatchery/wild fitness differences.