Genetics

Summary presentation of the initial results of the salmon hatchery and rod fishery tissue samples using genetic markers. Estimates of adults salmon return rates from the hatchery stocking programme to the fishery are provided and management implcations discussed.

This paper investigates genetic diversity and population size in four populations of wild Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) in Europe, from the Rivers Oir and Scorff (France) and Spey and Shin.Our results showed high genetic diversity for all populations studied, despite their wide range of current effective sizes. To improve understanding of high genetic diversity observed in the populations with low effective size, we developed a model predicting present diversity as a function of past demographic history. This suggested that high genetic diversity could be explained by a bottleneck occurring within recent centuries rather than by gene flow.