| Abstract: | Salmonids are famous for their homing precision and straying is usually regarded as a failure of individuals to achieve the population norm. However, without straying there would be no salmonid populations throughout much of their present range, as much of that area has been colonized by modern salmonids over the past 8000–15000 years. Straying is a normal population strategy entirely appropriate to a colonizing phase of a species and hatchery populations are comparable to colonizing wild populations. The real challenge for ranching is to ensure that the learned components of the homing process are so well ingrained that any genetic tendency to stray can be over-ridden. |
