In recreational fisheries it is understood that individual fish that exhibit bolder personality traits have a tendency to be removed from the population (i.e., fishing mortality via harvest or catch‐and‐release mortality), while more timid individuals remain. The use of aquatic protected areas (APAs) has been promoted as a means of offsetting the negative consequences that are associated with fishing mortality by protecting the full suite of phenotypes. However, little work has investigated whether APAs are able to maintain heterogeneity in behavioral traits in wild fish. We attempted to address this question by using wild Bluegill Lepomis macrochirus from Lake Opinicon, a freshwater system consisting of both an APA and heavily fished areas. The Bluegill were obtained via angling from three zones in the lake: the main lake area (i.e., fished), the APA (which has been in place since the 1940s), and a transitional zone between these two areas. In the laboratory, the Bluegill were subjected to two behavioral assessments, a Z‐maze and a flight‐initiation‐distance (FID) test, to address differences in boldness and risk‐taking between these populations. No significant effects of capture zone were detected for any of the behavioral metrics that were assessed in the maze trial. However, individuals that originated from the main lake population had significantly higher FID scores than the fish from the transitional zone and the APA did, indicating that they were more timid. Our results suggest that fisheries activities may only be acting only on specific traits, which may explain some of the null results that are presented here. Nevertheless, our study provides evidence that APAs are providing a reservoir of less timid individuals, which is consistent with an evolutionarily enlightened management strategy.

中文翻译：

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在长期水生保护区内外捕获的野生蓝Blue的比较行为

在休闲渔业中，人们应理解，表现出大胆个性特征的单条鱼有被从种群中清除的趋势（即捕捞导致的死亡率或捕捞和释放的死亡率），而胆小的个体仍然存在。提倡使用水生保护区，以通过保护整套表型来抵消与捕鱼死亡率有关的负面影响。但是，很少有研究调查APA是否能够维持野生鱼类行为性状的异质性。我们试图通过使用野生蓝g Lepomis macrochirus解决此问题来自Opinicon湖，这是一个由APA和重鱼区组成的淡水系统。蓝g是通过从湖中的三个区域钓鱼而获得的：主要湖区（即被捕捞的区域），APA（自1940年代就已经存在），以及这两个区域之间的过渡区。在实验室中，蓝g接受了两次行为评估，即一次Z迷宫和一次飞行起始距离（FID）测试，以解决这些人群之间在勇气和冒险方面的差异。对于迷宫试验中评估的任何行为指标，均未检测到捕获区的显着影响。但是，来自主要湖泊种群的个体的FID得分明显高于来自过渡带和APA的鱼类，表明他们胆小。我们的结果表明，渔业活动可能只针对特定的性状，这可能解释了此处提出的一些无效结果。然而，我们的研究提供了证据表明APA可以提供较少胆怯的个体，这与进化开明的管理策略是一致的。