June 2026 – The team – Kim Halvorsen, Ben Ellis, Torkel Larsen, Anne Berit Skiftesvik and Reidun Bjelland – gathered in Austevoll during the first half of June to tie up several loose ends in our wrasse research.
For the genetics, we ran a crossing experiment to establish relatedness thresholds among full-sibs, half-sibs and parent–offspring pairs. This will underpin future work linking genetic relatedness to individual behaviour. The team has a paper in review (Jansson et al. Proc R B) documenting unprecedentedly high levels of close-kin pairs and inbreeding in the corkwing wrasse population in Austevoll.
We stripped females and males (collected in the field), let the eggs develop in separate containers (see photos), and sampled them on the last day before hatching (day 9 at 16 °C). In addition, we carried out an experiment testing the effect of elapsed time on egg fertilisability. This was motivated by our observation that sneaker males attempt to sneak-spawn for a considerable time after the female has deposited her eggs, which suggested the eggs should remain fertilisable. The preliminary analysis supports this, providing a nice foundation for a paper that can quantify and explain sneaking behaviour in corkwing wrasse.
Lastly, Reidun, Anne Berit and Ben experimented with the buoyancy of goldsinny eggs. The literature has been divided on whether the eggs float or sink, so clarifying this across different salinities would help us understand the potential for self-recruitment in this species.
