Dispersal direction, geographic location and river discharge all influence juvenile growth of a freshwater fish

Abstract Seeking out appropriate habitat or food resources is one of the key reasons why animals move. Despite the benefits of movement, some individuals in a population remain resident or express alternative movement phenotypes. Movement, however, is energetically costly and can result in resources being diverted away from growth and reproduction. The presence of multiple movement phenotypes within populations suggests that each can have commensurate levels of performance depending on the underlying environmental conditions. Here we explore the context‐dependent costs and benefits of upstream and downstream juvenile dispersal in a large river system. We expect that if the energetic costs of moving (upstream against a current or downstream with a current) exceed any benefits to growth, then residents (who do not move) will have faster growth. Alternatively, movement costs may be offset if individuals move to more favourable environments, resulting in dispersers benefiting with faster growth. We used biological information naturally archived in the otoliths of a potamodromous fish, golden perch Macquaria ambigua , to quantify how movement phenotypes affect growth across individuals exposed to spatiotemporally varying environmental conditions. We found that juvenile growth differed considerably among dispersal phenotypes (resident, upstream, downstream, stocked): in general, surviving wild‐spawned downstream and upstream dispersers and hatchery‐stocked fish all grew faster than individuals that remained resident within their natal reach. Further, juvenile growth was sensitive to local environmental conditions and had carryover effects from an individual's natal‐year. Juvenile growth of all dispersal phenotypes was higher in years with below average natal‐year summer discharge (when fish are ~2–3 months old), likely because of increased concentrations of food resources. In contrast, the effects of natal‐year spring discharge (around the time individuals were spawned) were dependent on dispersal direction, with positive effects for downstream dispersers and upstream dispersers, and negative effects for resident individuals. Our results suggest that an individual's growth can benefit from early‐life movement, although the magnitude of this effect depends on local environmental conditions and the direction travelled. Our study reinforces the importance of heterogeneous and connected riverscapes that foster a diversity of individual growth responses.