Estimating allometric energy allocation between somatic and gonadic growth

1. Quantifying growth patterns and energy allocation strategies is essential to comprehend the biological characteristics of organisms and their interactions with broader biological communities in which they reside. Mathematical models, such as mono and di-phasic allometric energy-based growth models, play a pivotal role in delineating such body growth patterns. However, modelling approaches often face some major challenges that stem from both model nonlinearity and data limitation in practice.2. The present study investigates the nature of the challenges and develops a flexible diphasic allometric growth model. The proposed modelling framework offers an effective parameter estimation approach directly built upon statistical smoothing techniques and numerical optimisation methods.3. The simulation study undertaken demonstrates that the proposed approach can provide accurate parameter estimates. The illustrative example analyses the individual body and gonadic weight of subtropical cutlassfish (Trichiurus japonicus) from the cooler northern and warmer southern coasts of Taiwan. The results reveal the linear growth of fish in the south compared with those in the north, which distinctive growth pattern results from the lower dependency to body mass in the somatic and gonadic growth.4. The proposed unified modelling framework offers new advances in growth modelling to shed light upon the intraspecific life-history strategies, quantifying growth patterns and energy allocation strategies.</div

BFspawner_mean_length_data

This file contains the time series of mean catch length data of adult Pacific bluefin tuna based on three fisheries: Taiwanese longline (TWL), Japanese coastal longline (JCL), and Japanese purse seine (JPS). The unit of length is cm. FYEAR: fishing year. Description of the sampling methods is available in the Material and Methods of the paper and supplemental material Table S1

Phylogenetic chronogram of the Engraulidae based on a Bayesian relaxed clock analysis.

<p>The outgroup <i>Ilisha elongata</i> is not shown. Horizontal timescale is in million years before present (Ma) (Paleogene Epoch abbreviations: Paleo, Paleocene; Eo, Eocene; and Oligo, Oligocene). The yellow and grey horizontal bars at nodes are 95% age credibility intervals. The grey horizontal bar indicates calibration constraint of Engraulidae age. Numbers in italics given at nodes are the Bayesian posterior probabilities when <1. See text for details on the method of time-calibrated phylogenetic reconstruction.</p

Characteristics of high-throughput sequencing data (Illumina) for each reconstructed mitogenome and corresponding reference mitochondrial genome information.

<p>Characteristics of high-throughput sequencing data (Illumina) for each reconstructed mitogenome and corresponding reference mitochondrial genome information.</p

Maximum likelihood tree of the Engraulidae from analysis of the mitogenomic matrix.

<p>Branch lengths are proportional to the number of substitutions per nucleotide position (scale bar = 0.3 substitutions). Numbers at nodes are Bootstrap Proportions (indicated in percentage). The tree is rooted with <i>Ilisha elongata</i> (Pristigasteridae). The genus <i>Encrasicholina</i> is highlighted in grey. See text for details on the method of phylogenetic reconstruction.</p

List of taxa examined in this study with familial and subfamilial classifications indicated.

<p>Within <i>Encrasicholina</i>, the nomenclature follows the recent revision by Hata and Motomura [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0181329#pone.0181329.ref009" target="_blank">9</a>]; see text for details.</p