Hilaire Drouineau

French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) | INRAE · Department of Waters

A robust assessment of the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) stock, required to guide conservation efforts, is challenged by the species' vast range, high variability in demographic parameters and data inadequacies. Novel ideas and underutilised resources that may assist both analytic assessments and spatially oriented modelling include (1) species...

This report presents the calibration of the EDA model in France, Spain and Portugal during the SUDOANG project. The objective was to predict escapement of silver eel. https://sudoang.eu/en/task-groups/. Some of the outputs are detailed in the Atlas. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357909065_Atlas_of_European_eel_distribution_Anguilla_angui...

Food‐web modelling is a key tool to provide a global and comprehensive knowledge on community structure, biodiversity and ecosystem processes and functioning. In particular, it allows computing integrative and holistic indices describing food web characteristics, topology and functioning. However, one of the main sources of uncertainty in most food...

In freshwater ecosystems, water temperature and discharge are two intrinsically associated triggers of key events in the life cycle of aquatic organisms such as the migration of diadromous fishes. However, global changes have already profoundly altered the thermal and hydrological regimes of rivers, affecting the timing of fish migration as well as...

The American eel (Anguilla rostrata) occupies a vast range in the West Atlantic Ocean and inflowing waters. Despite its presumed panmictic status, management of this species is geographically fragmented. There have been widespread calls for internationally coordinated efforts towards a range-wide stock assessment, but such an objective faces obstac...

Les changements globaux modifient le débit naturel et la température des rivières, ce qui affecte le fonctionnement des écosystèmes d’eau douce. Ces deux variables agissent comme des signaux environnementaux cruciaux pour synchroniser les processus écologiques clés du cycle de vie des espèces de poissons (par exemple, la reproduction, les migration...

The Joint EIFAAC/ICES/GFCM Working group on eels (WGEEL) met by correspondence and video conference from September 7 – 10 September and 27 September – 4 October in 2021 to assess the state of the European eel and its fisheries, investigate the effects of contaminants on the reproductive capacity of the eel stock, discuss the findings of WKFEA, furt...

Human-induced river fragmentation is a major threat to migratory fish species. Restoring river connectivity requires the construction of fish passage solutions, such as fishways for upstream and downstream migration. While many studies focussed on the upstream migration of diadromous fishes, and especially of adult Atlantic salmons (Salmo salar), w...

Climate change is modifying the hydrological and thermal regimes of rivers worldwide, threatening the triggering of organisms’ key life-cycle processes. European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a critically endangered fish species that migrates over several thousand kilometres between its rearing habitats in continental waters of Europe and North Africa...

Uncertainty is a challenge in modelling ecological systems and has been a source of misunderstandings between modelers and non-modelers. The "Chance and Necessity" (CaN) modelling approach has been proposed to address this issue, in the case of trophic network modelling. CaN modelling focuses exploring food-web trajectories that can satisfy fundame...

Connectivity between spawning grounds and recruitment areas of marine fish species drives population structure and dynamics, and may be affected by climate-induced changes in oceanographic processes. We analysed the variability in recruitment success of larvae to estuarine nursery areas along the Iberian Atlantic coast of four fish species with dis...

The SUDOANG project aims at providing common tools to managers to support eel conservation in the SUDOE area (Spain, France and Portugal). VISUANG is the SUDOANG Interactive Web Application that will host all these tools. The application consists of an eel distribution atlas (GT1), assessments of mortalities caused by turbines and an atlas showing...

Mistrust between scientists and non-scientist stakeholders is a key challenge in fishery management. The support of management with complex models is difficult, as these models cannot easily communicate their results to end users, resulting in a lack of confidence. As an example, the complex life cycle of the European eel raises problems of coordin...

Mistrust between scientists and non-scientist stakeholders is a key challenge in fishery management. This problem is exacerbated with the use of complex models to support management: these models suffer from difficulties in communicating their results and a lack of confidence from end users. The European eel is an illustrative example; its complex...

Global climate change is modifying the hydrological and thermal regimes of rivers, threatening organisms whose key life-cycle processes are synchronized by these environmental cues. European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a critically endangered fish species that migrates over several thousand kilometres between its spawning area in the Sargasso Sea an...

chocR is a package for the R software to perform choc analyses. Choc analysis aims at detecting variations of occurrences (increase or decrease) of events in multivariate time series. In other words, here is a method to examine joint monotonic trends in multivariate time series. By taking into account the occurrence of a key event in the life cycle...

Most key life-events of organisms are synchronized by complex interactions of several environmental cues to ensure optimal survival and growth of individuals and their offspring. However, global change is known to affect multiple components of ecosystems and cues at the same time. Therefore, detecting joint trends in covariate time series is a cruc...

The Joint EIFAAC/ICES/GFCM Working group on eels (WGEEL) met by correspondence and video conference from September 21–28 in 2020 to assess the state of the European eel, investigate the effects of habitat loss on the eel stock and its management, review and update the Stock Annex, prepare the 2021 Data Call and report on any updates to the scientif...

The amount of potentially toxic chemicals in a fish depends on various environmental factors, such as temperature and feeding ecology, which can be affected by Global Changes (GC). The main objective of the present work was to study the relative influence of temperature, food quality and food availability on the growth and contamination of juvenile...

Calibrating ecological models or making decisions with them is an optimisation problem with challenging methodological issues. Depending on the optimisation formulation, there may be a large variety of optimisation configurations (e.g. multiple objectives, constraints, stochastic criteria) and finding a single acceptable solution may be difficult....

1. Climate change threatens anadromous fishes such as the allis shad (Alosa alosa) populations of which have declined since the 20th century in Europe. Sensitivity to climate change could be quantified by determining the fish’s spawning behaviour, defined as the timing of reproduction (i.e. spawning events) as a function of temporally variable envi...

The specific stock composition and dispersion of anadromous fish species aggregations in the marine environment are poorly known, while they can play a major role in the metapopulation dynamics. Otolith microchemistry has proven to be a powerful tool to address natal origins of anadromous fish. We used archived otolith microchemistry to investigate...

All around the world, diadromous fish are facing multiple anthropogenic pressures resulting in a global decline in these migratory species. In Gironde, the allis shad populations which were the most abundant in Europe are no exception and have dramatically declined since 2000. Failure in reproduction success is one of the proposed explanations for...

Le déclin mondial des anguilles tempérées est lié aux effets combinés de multiples pressions anthropiques. Cependant, la complexité du cycle de vie des anguilles et leurs capacités d’adaptation font qu’il est très difficile de connaître le poids relatif de chacune des pressions. Leurs panmixies et les longues dérives larvaires sont des freins aux a...

Mémoire d'Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches - Ecole Doctorale 304 Sciences et Environnements, Université de Bordeaux

Pollution greatly impacts ecosystems health and associated ecological functions. Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are among the most studied contaminants due to their persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity potential. Biomagnification is often described using the estimation of a Trophic Magnification Factor (TMF). This estimate is based on t...

EDA (Eel Density Analysis) is a modelling tool which allows the prediction of yellow eel densities and silver eel escapement from electrofishing survey networks. The 2018 version of EDA (2.2.1) is based on a dataset of 29183 electrofishing operations compared to 24 541 for 2015 (version 2.2.0) and only 9 556 in the 2012 version (2.1). The larger da...

Temperate eels Anguilla anguilla (European eel), A. rostrata (American eel) and A. japonica (Japanese eel) are three catadromous species which have been declining since the 1970s/1980s despite their remarkable adaptive capacity. Because of their specific life cycles, which share distant oceanic spawning grounds and continental growth stage, eels ar...

Climate, by altering the spatio-temporal distributions of suitable habitats, leads to modifications in a multitude of species ranges. In recent years, the ability of species to adjust to changing climatic conditions is of growing concern. In the present study, a generic trait-based method to assess species exploratory potential under climate change...

Allis shad, Alosa alosa (Linnaeus, 1758) and twaite shad, Alosa fallax (Lacépède, 1803), are a complex of two sister species of anadromous Clupeidae species, with A. alosa populations facing a great decline in the 2000s. Whereas the freshwater part of the biological cycle of these species was widely addressed (mainly for A. alosa), information abou...

The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a catadromous species that reproduces at sea and inhabits continental waters during its growth phase. River fragmentation due to obstacles is considered one cause of the decline of this species. However, the colonization process of river catchments by eels is still poorly understood. In this article, we compa...

Allis shad, Alosa alosa (Linnaeus, 1758) and twaite shad, Alosa fallax (Lacépède, 1803), are a complex of two sister species of anadromous Clupeidae species, with A. alosa populations facing a great decline in the 2000s. Whereas the freshwater part of the biological cycle of these species was widely addressed (mainly for A. alosa), information abou...

Ecosystem fragmentation is a serious threat to biodiversity and one of the main challenges in ecosystem restoration. River continuity restoration (RCR) has often targeted diadromous fishes, a group of species supporting strong cultural and economic values and especially sensitive to river fragmentation. Yet it has frequently produced mixed results...

L’alose vraie, Alosa alosa (Linnaeus, 1758) et l’alose feinte, Alosa fallax (Lacépède, 1803), sont un complexe de deux espèces sœurs anadromes de Clupeidae, les populations d'alose vraie faisant face à un grand déclin dans les années 2000. Alors que la partie en eau douce du cycle biologique de ces espèces a été largement abordée (principalement po...

The potential effects of global warming on the allis shad population were tested by combining a time series of spawning acts with expected thermal survival rates for embryos and larvae until 14 days post hatching. The yearly mean survival of spawn for each reproductive season was calculated and an index of reproductive efficiency based on this surv...

An international sampling program investigating the causes of the decline of American eels (Anguilla rostrata) and European eels (Anguilla anguilla) in the St. Lawrence (Canada) and Gironde (France) rivers systems provided the opportunity to compare early growth of eels of each species among habitats using back-calculated size-at-age from 1 to 5 ye...

Similar to many diadromous fish species, dramatic declines were observed for Allis shad, an anadromous Clupeidae, since the beginning of the 2000s. The knowledge of population and metapopulation dynamics is a key issue for the management of migratory species. Although homing behaviour is dominant in Allis shad, staying causes exchanges between popu...

Temperate eels are three panmictic catadromous species with a long period of oceanic passive larval drift and large distribution areas in contrasting environments. Spatial patterns of life history traits have been observed, and are correlated with environmental gradients, and may arise from both adaptive phenotypic plasticity and genetic polymorphi...

The present survey examines the trophodynamics of a suite of 19 perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in a temperate macrotidal estuary (Gironde, SW France). Across the 147 biota samples (18 taxa) collected, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorooctane sulfonamide (FOSA) and C8–C14 perfluoroalkyl carboxylates (PFCAs) were the most recurrent analyt...

Alterations of species phenology in response to climate change are now unquestionable. Until now, most studies have reported precocious occurrence of life cycle events as a major phenological response. Desynchronizations of biotic interactions, in particular predator-prey relationships, are however assumed to strongly impact ecosystems’ functioning...

Mean seasonal pattern of distribution between the three periods. White boxplot, light-grey boxplot and dark-grey boxplot correspond respectively to the 1985–1988; 1989–2002 and 2003–2010 periods. The thick line of e boxplot represents the median of 50,000 iterations, the box corresponds to the first and third quartile and the whiskers correspond to...

Bayesian script of the model. Nby: number of years; nbm: number of month; nbp: number of inter-shift period; esp: Mean; lambda: Dirichlet concentration parameter; alpha: flat prior. The code was performed with Jags software. (TIF)

Evolution of the five phenological indicators between the tree periods (fish and zooplankton species). Intervals around the mean (black points) represent the intervals of credibility at 95%. For the “Time of residence”, numbers correspond to the number of months of residence of species in the estuary. Letter a, b or c illustrates the significant di...

Evolution of the percentage of covering between predators and preys. Intervals around the mean (black points) represent the intervals of credibility at 95%. Letter a, b or c illustrates the significant differences between periods. The symbols refer to the decision tree (Fig 3) (TIF)

The objective of this study was to assess the potential effects of climate change on the survival of allis shad early life history stages. Embryos and larvae were exposed to temperatures ranging from 5 to 35 °C. No embryonic survival was recorded at extreme temperatures (≤10 and ≥30 °C), and no larval survival was observed at 5 or 35 °C. Based on t...

Obstacles in rivers are considered to be one of the main threats to diadromous fish. As a result of the recent collapse of the European eel, the European Commission introduced a Regulation, requiring to reduce all sources of anthropogenic mortality, including those caused by passing through hydropower turbines. Improving knowledge about migration t...

European eel (Anguilla anguilla) recruitment has been declining at least since the early 1980s at the scale of its distribution area. Since the population is panmictic, its stock assessment should be carried out on a range-wide basis. However, assessing the overall stock during the continental phase remains difficult given its widespread distributi...

L’Association Française d’Halieutique réunit environ 200 scientifiques français de divers organismes d’enseignement supérieur et de recherche, de diverses disciplines, tous intéressés par l’halieutique (la science de la pêche, mais aussi des ressources aquatiques exploitées, des écosystèmes qui les supportent et des systèmes d’exploitation). Tous l...

Imagine you are a young and hungry fish looking for food in an estuary (the part of a river where it meets the ocean). You need to grow big and strong before you migrate to the ocean, and depend on tiny floating creatures (plankton) for food. However, the occurrence of these tiny creatures in the estuary varies seasonally. Lucky for you, nature has...

The European eel (Anguilla anguilla), and generally, temperate eels, are relevant species for studying adaptive mechanisms to environmental variability because of their large distribution areas and their limited capacity of local adaptation. In this context, GenEveel, an individual-based optimization model, was developed to explore the role of adap...

In this introductory paper we highlight key questions that were discussed during the symposium on “Status, functioning and shifts in marine ecosystems” organized by the Association Française d’Halieutique (French Association for Fisheries Sciences, Montpellier, France, July 2015). This symposium illustrated that fisheries science is now working at...

Since decades, Global Change pressured directly and indirectly the structure and function of ecosystems. Abrupt changes of the biodiversity have already been observed in response to linear or sudden modifications of the environment. These abrupt shifts can cause lasting reorganization of ecosystems, with communities showing new functional responses...

Given the importance of reliable recruitment estimates when assessing temperate eel stocks and enforcing appropriate management measures, surprisingly few analytical tools have been developed to estimate yearly glass eel recruitment. Of the models that do exist, large-scale models generally rely on strong assumptions relating to fishing activity, w...