On size and growth in freshwater fish

Patterns of growth and size achieved in freshwater fish are examined with relation to the issues of indeterminate and determinate growth and asymptotic growth. Various authors suggest minimum, average and maximum sizes attained by fish, variously pointing to very small gobies and very large sharks, with most fish being about 150 mm long. Growth in fish is distinctive in that typically it continues throughout life, even though it becomes slower with increasing age and the onset of sexual maturity. Growth rates and size achieved by fish are highly flexible and subject to both genetic and environmental controls, so that size reached may vary with environmental variables such as water temperatures and food availability (both food abundance and prey types and sizes). Frequency distributions of 5 disparate freshwater fish faunas (Papua-New Guinea 267 species and tropical; North America 709 species and subtropical to Arctic; Australia 176 species and tropical to temperate; New Zealand and Great Britain 27 and 39 species and both warm to cool temperate) closely resemble distributions generated by the theoretical model of Hutchinson & MacArthur, and also data on diverse faunas. Frequency distributions in these faunas are closely similar, with a majority of species being small. This similarity would seem to suggest a general explanation. However, examination of the freshwater fish fauna of North America suggests that, rather than showing a predominance of large fish in the Arctic, the fauna has more large fish towards the tropics, though the proportion of large fish there is lower owing to the proliferation of small species in the tropics and a paucity of them towards the Arctic. Analysis shows a shift in the size composition of the fauna with latitude and shows that the general pattern for the whole of North America consists of a composite series of rather different patterns. This suggests that there is probably no meaningful general explanation of the overall patterns seen in these diverse and disparate faunas and that the similarity in overall size distributions between freshwater fish faunas of North America, New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand are of little ecological or evolutionary significance. The generality of Cope's rule is questionable, especially for fish, in which dwarfing and/or evolution towards smaller size are seen to be common phenomena.