Published estimates of life history traits for 84 populations of Teleost fishes

1) Demographic traits These data are published data of age-specific mortality rates, age-specific lengths or weights, length and age at maturity, fecundity-length relationships, and egg size for 84 populations from 49 species of primarily commercial teleost fishes. The populations included are those for which all the life history traits under study have been estimated over a period shorter than 10 years. Traits were estimated from within the ten year window or averaged across it when data were available. Only studies in which reference population, sample size, techniques used for ageing fish and counting eggs, and models used for estimating mortality were reported are included. When only a size or age range was available, the midpoint between the extreme values was used. Raw data were converted into seven demographic traits: - Time-to-5%-survival (T.05): the time elapsed from sexual maturity until 95% of a cohort is dead. T.05 fwas estimated from an exponential mortality model, based on total mortality coefficients estimated by Virtual Population Analysis (age-structured model) in most cases or cohort analysis or catch curves. - Length-at-5%-survival (L.05). In fishes, adult size is difficult to measure because of their indeterminate growth. Adult size reported here is length at time-to-5%-survival. - Age at sexual maturity (Tm): median age at maturity was estimated directly from the data or by fitting a logistic curve to age-specific proportion mature data. When only an age range was available, the midpoint between minimum and maximum is reported. - Length at sexual maturity (Lm): median length at maturity was estimated as age at maturity. - Slope of the fecundity-length relationship (Fb): fish fecundity, defined as the number of eggs present in the ovaries immediately before spawning, is known to increase intraspecifically with the size of females. This increase is usually described by a power-law F = aLb. The exponent of this relationship, b (slope of the log-log fecundity-length regression), accounts for the increase in fecundity with size. - Fecundity at maturity (Fm): fecundity in the year of maturity was estimated from length at maturity, the fecundity-length relationship and the number of spawning bouts per year for batch spawners. - Egg volume (Egg): When information on egg size was unavailable in specific papers, values were borrowed from other studies, using the following criteria in the descending order: from the same period, the same population, the same species. In five species of Perciformes no estimate was available for any population, thus egg volume was estimated from other species of the same family. 2) Fishing pressure Three types of environments with low, moderate and high fishing pressure were defined. - To scale the pressure exerted by fishing to the natural population turn-over, it was expressed as the ratio of fishing mortality to natural mortality rates (F/M). Data were gathered from the literature together with demographic traits. Authors use the following methods to estimate natural mortality rates: intercept of a regression of total mortality on fishing effort, linear relationship known between estimates of natural mortality, growth parameters and the temperature, or multispecies models. Fishing mortality rates were estimated from Virtual Population Analysis or cohort analysis, or as the difference between total and natural mortality. Three levels of fishing pressure were defined: low fishing pressure (fishing mortality lower than natural mortality, F/M < 1), intermediate (1 <= F/M < 2) and high (F/M >= 2).