Trash or treasure? Use of sagittal otoliths partially composed of vaterite for hatchery stock discrimination in steelhead

Abstract

Sagittal otoliths are normally deposited as the CaCO3 polymorph aragonite; however, a proportion of otoliths transitions to vaterite during growth. This transition can complicate otolith chemistry analyses, as differences in the crystalline structure (aragonite or vaterite) of otoliths causes variation in otolith chemistry signatures. To address this issue, we introduce a method to utilize sagittal otoliths partially composed of vaterite for stock discrimination. Using this method, we determined the hatchery origins of yearlings from five Lake Erie hatcheries by using Ba, Mg, Mn, and Sr concentrations in vaterite sections of steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) otoliths. We then compared the classification accuracy of our vaterite method with a method in which otoliths composed entirely of aragonite were used. Overall, quadratic discriminant function analyses revealed similar classification success when elemental concentrations from vaterite (95% accuracy) and aragonite (94% accuracy) otolith regions were used. The methods introduced here could likely be used for other fish species that have otoliths that transition to vaterite as long as an adequate number of juvenile fish are available to develop vaterite otolith chemistry signatures.