Evaluation of a Wisconsin-type bioenergetics model to estimate brook charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) growth and food consumption under two salinity conditions
Publication: Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
6 February 2025
Abstract
In Québec, Canada, brook charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) is the most sought-after species for recreational fisheries, which makes it economically important. To improve population monitoring and better anticipate climate change impacts on brook charr, bioenergetics models can be useful. The objective of this research was to evaluate the performance of a resident brook charr Wisconsin Energy Budget (WEB) model applied to an anadromous strain under two salinity treatments. Growth and food consumption were predicted by the model and compared to the observed values obtained after a 60 day experiment in the laboratory on fish reared in fresh or brackish water. Predictions for fish reared in fresh water better estimated growth rate and consumption than for fish reared in brackish water, for which growth was overestimated and consumption was underestimated. Overall, these results suggest that there is a difference for the WEB model’s predictions depending on the salinity and that observed food consumption is predicted more accurately than growth.
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Information
Published In
Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
Volume 82 • 2025
Pages: 1 - 11
History
Received: 3 September 2024
Accepted: 4 November 2024
Accepted manuscript online: 20 November 2024
Version of record online: 6 February 2025
Notes
This paper is part of a collection dedicated to the work of Daniel Boisclair for which a symposium was held at the 2023 meeting of the Society of Canadian Aquatic Sciences in Montreal, Canada, to recognize his scientific contributions.
Copyright
© 2025 The Authors. Permission for reuse (free in most cases) can be obtained from copyright.com.
Data Availability Statement
Data files and scripts used for this study are publicly available from the Université du Québec à Rimouski’s Dataverse Collection within the Borealis Repository (https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/5A4LHI).
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Authors
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: VC, DD
Data curation: VC
Formal analysis: VC
Funding acquisition: DD
Methodology: VC, CA, DD
Project administration: VC, DD
Resources: CA, DD
Supervision: CA, DD
Validation: VC, CA, DD
Visualization: VC
Writing – original draft: VC
Writing – review & editing: CA, DD
Competing Interests
The authors declare there are no competing interests.
Funding Information
Canadian Network for Research and Innovation in Machining Technology, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada: DGECR-2021-00178
This project was supported by funds from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Counsel Discovery Grants (NSERC-DGECR-2021-00178) awarded to D. Deslauriers.
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Cite As
Virginie Chalifoux, Céline Audet, and David Deslauriers. 2025. Evaluation of a Wisconsin-type bioenergetics model to estimate brook charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) growth and food consumption under two salinity conditions. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
82: 1-11.
https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2024-0263
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