ESR 3:259-266 (2007)  -  DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/esr00047

ABSTRACT: The proactive strategy for restoring Florida’s depleted queen conch Strombus gigas population includes increasing the spawning stock by translocating reproductively deficient individuals into existing spawning aggregations where our previous research has shown that the translocated conch will develop normally. However, there may be unintended and potentially negative ecological ramifications if the translocated conch displace the native conch. To examine this issue, we translocated non-reproductive adult conch into 2 offshore spawning aggregations and used acoustic telemetry to track them relative to similarly tagged native conch. At one aggregation, the home-range sizes of native conch were significantly smaller than those of the translocated conch, which led to a significant reduction in the static interaction (i.e. home-range overlap) between the 2 groups of conch. However, the dynamic interaction (i.e. sociality coefficient) among the translocated conch was significantly higher. We hypothesize that these results were driven by reproduction: the translocations took place in July during the breeding season, and because the translocated conch were not yet in reproductive condition they moved into forage habitats, while the natives occupied the breeding habitats. At the other aggregation, there were no significant differences in the movements or interactions between native and translocated conch, a result probably due to the mosaic of habitats at this site, where breeding and forage areas are in close proximity. Our results indicate that displacement of natives did not occur at either site, and that translocating conch into spawning aggregations does not have adverse consequences relative to the interactions among conspecifics.

KEY WORDS: Queen conch · Strombus gigas · Restoration · Dynamic interaction · Static interaction · Translocation · Acoustic telemetry