Impact of precocious male parr on the effective size of a wild population of Atlantic salmon

1. There is growing evidence that sexually mature but morphologically juvenile males of Atlantic salmon (precocious or mature male parr) actively participate in reproduction and, therefore, in the genetic composition of the populations of this species. The impact of mature male parr on the effective population size (N-e) of such populations has been previously studied under experimental settings, but no studies have been performed directly on natural populations. 2. Continuous monitoring and sampling of all sea returns is possible in the LErez River (northwest of Spain). From demographic data on variances of reproductive success and genetic data from six microsatellite marker loci we carried out parentage assignment and assessed the impact of male parr on demographic and genetic estimates of N-e in two consecutive years. 3. Our results reveal that: (i) approximately 60% of the total sire paternity is attributable to mature parr; (ii) mature parr decrease the variance of reproductive success of males by a threefold factor and increase the effective population size of males by a 10-fold factor; (iii) however, they do not substantially affect the variance of reproductive success and the effective size of females; (iv) mature parr increase two-to threefold the overall effective size of the population but the ratio N-e/N, where N is the population size including or not mature parr in each case, is not affected.