Otolith fluctuating asymmetry: a misconception of its biological relevance?

• DOI: 10.1093/icesjms/fsv067
• Publication Date: 2015-04-21T00:21:52Z
• Authors: Carlos Díaz-Gil; Miquel Palmer; Ignacio A. Catalán; Josep Alós; Lee A. Fuiman; Elena García; María del Mar Gil; Amalia Grau; Andrew Kang; Rommel H. Maneja; John A. Mohan; Bernat Morro; Jason J. Schaffler; Lucie Buttay; Inmaculada Riera-...; Borja Tolosa; Beatriz Morales-Nin
• Keywords: Interpretability; Fluctuating asymmetry; Proxy (statistics); Relevance

Abstract For decades, disruption of the bilateral symmetry body structures has been related to underperformance and, hence, fitness. In fish, this concept coupled with claimed evidence for increased fluctuating asymmetry (FA) pairs hard structures, such as otoliths under conditions stress, led use otolith FA (OFA) a proxy individual fitness and population success. Interpreting those significant differences in OFA relation stress-inducing environments using them identify suboptimal survival is especially appealing context of, example, assessing climate change historical collections. Despite several works that give support usefulness approach, we report on number unpublished published datasets from wide range both, wild populations experimental designs show no correlation between any usual indicators or expected stress gradients. Our results suggest there may be strong bias literature towards positive relationships, despite enormous importance negative understanding significance OFA. These might shed light interpretability both laboratory field studies.