Use of Telemetry Data to Quantify Life History Diversity in Migrating Juvenile Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)

Variations in species distribution, population structure, and behavior can provide a portfolio effect that buffers populations against rapid environmental change. Although diversity has been identified as a goal for effective resource management and genetic and demographic tools have been developed, life history remains challenging to quantify. In this study, we demonstrate a novel metric of life history diversity using telemetry data from migratory fish. Here, we examined diversity in the outmigration behavior of juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) released in the Sacramento River, California, between 2007 and 2017. In this synthesis, we examined a wide variety of landscape and demographic drivers at high resolution by incorporating many individual telemetry studies, with variability in release location by year, environmental conditions, and all runs of salmon that are present in the watershed. When years were grouped by shared hydrologic conditions, variation in travel time was significantly higher in wet years. Further, our model showed a negative effect of warm temperatures at low flows on the variation in migration movements. This suggests that enhanced hydrologic connectivity increases the variation in migration time, a representation of habitat complexity and biocomplexity, despite the degraded state of this watershed and the weakened state of these populations. Variation in migration behavior could buffer species from current and future environmental changes, such as climate effects on precipitation and temperature. Hence, behavioral metrics generated from telemetry studies can be used to understand life history diversity and the potential effects of environmental fluctuations.