Brundu G et al. (2020), Going back into the wild: the behavioural effec...

ECB-ART-49763

Conserv Physiol 2020 Apr 06;81:coaa015. doi: 10.1093/conphys/coaa015.

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Going back into the wild: the behavioural effects of raising sea urchins in captivity.

Brundu G , Farina S , Domenici P .

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Sea urchin harvesting has rapidly expanded in the last decades. Since many sea urchin species play important ecological role, large-scale commercial sea urchin fisheries can have complex effects on benthic communities. In many temperate regions, overharvesting has compromised marine ecosystems to such an extent that reintroduction of sea urchins raised in captivity may be a valid solution for the enhancement of depleted marine wild populations. In some regions of the Mediterranean Sea, improving the growth efficiency of captive sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus to be reintroduced has become a widespread practice. However, no study has yet considered the potential behavioural effects of raising sea urchins in captivity when they are introduced in the natural environment. This study provides information about the behavioural effects of captivity on P. lividus in terms of locomotion performance, a trait that can be fundamental for responding to predators and for relocation after environmental disturbances such as currents and waves. Movements of captive-born and wild sea urchins were video-recorded and compared in (i) total exposure to external cues, (ii) partial exposure to external cues and (iii) absence of external cues. Latency of locomotion, average speed and average velocity of sea urchins showed significant differences with respect to the level of exposure and their origin (i.e. wild vs. captive-born). Our results demonstrate that captive-born sea urchins in the wild showed long latency and slower locomotor performance when compared to wild sea urchins. Conversely, the straightness-of-path and locomotion direction of captive-born and wild sea urchins were similar in natural settings. Our results therefore suggest that captive-born sea urchins suffer the negative effects of captivity when introduced in a natural environment. Understanding the factors that decrease the performance of sea urchin will be important for developing procedures aimed at minimizing the negative effect of captivity before release into the wild.

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	Figure 1. Experimental set-up of three treatments with different levels of environmental exposure: Open (a); Closed (b); Indoor (c)
	Figure 2. An example of a track of a Captive-born sea urchin. The red dotted line represents the position of the individual in each frame while the white dotted line is the linear distance between the position of the individual in the first and the last frame.
	Figure 3. Box plots represent (a) latency of locomotion (sec), (b) average speed (cm/min), (c) average velocity (cm/min) and (d) straightness-of-path, for Captive and Wild juveniles in Indoor, Closed and Open treatments. Values are expressed as meanâÂ±âSE (see Table 1). Significant differences are reported in Table 2 and Appendix 1.
	Figure 4. Circular histograms representing frequency of the orientation of crawling trajectories for the two types of sea urchins, Captive and Wild, in the different exposure treatments, Indoor, Closed and Open. 0Â°, 90Â°, 180Â°, 270Â° represent North, East, South and West, respectively. The black arrow lines indicate the mean orientation, and its length is the mean vector (r, from 0 to 1; râ=â1 is represented by an arrow that reaches the edge of the outer circle). Concentric circles represent the frequency of observations. Bin width is set at 20Â°.