Biologging to examine multiple life stages of an estuarine-dependent fish

To better understand habitat use through ontogeny, this paper synthesizes 7 yr of biologging research on the adult and juvenile life stages of an estuarine-dependent fish, the common snook Centropomus undecimalis in Charlotte Harbor, Florida, USA. During 3 yr of telemetry research in a putative nursery habitat (mangrove creeks), we resighted 85.4% of 1924 juvenile snook marked after, and 13.5% of 2191 juveniles marked prior to, deployment of a telemetry array. During 4 yr of research in spawning habitat (barrier island beaches), we used seine nets and recaptured 5.63% of 3304 marked adult snook. After analyzing these concurrent data sets, we found significant intra-and interannual site fidelity patterns in both life stages, while documenting movement between juvenile and adult spawning habitats. Additionally, this tag-based approach allowed an investigation of the relative effects of a severe cold event, which reduced apparent survival by 22.6 to 38.3% for juveniles and 97.8 to 98.5% for adults. This work presents data within and between life stages that are critical to understanding processes affecting onto genetic habitat use and connectivity and underscores the importance of incorporating within-stage fidelity and emigration in studies on ontogeny.