“Everyone who has gone fishing has wondered why fish jump,” says John Reynolds, SFU professor of marine ecology.
“Now, thanks to research by SFU undergraduate student Emma Atkinson, we have experimental proof that at least one of the reasons may be to remove external parasites.”
The study, published last month in the Journal of Fish Biology, stemmed from Atkinson's honours research project, which she recently completed in the Department of Biological Sciences.
According to Atkinson, previous ideas about why fish leap include getting over obstacles during their upstream migration as adults, catching food, and avoiding predators. However, Atkinson says these reasons may not apply to juvenile sockeye salmon because their diet is composed almost exclusively of zooplankton in the water and their tendency is to scatter rather than leap in response to predation threats.
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