Modelling the growth of tambaqui, Colossoma macropomum (Cuvier, 1816) in floodplain lakes: model selection and multimodel inference.

The tambaqui, Colossoma macropomum, is one of the most commercially valuable Amazonian fish species, and in the floodplains of the region, they are caught in both rivers and lakes. Most growth studies on this species to date have adjusted only one growth model, the von Bertalanffy, without considering its possible uncertainties. In this study, four different models (von Bertalanffy, Logistic, Gompertz and the general model of Schnüte-Richards) were adjusted to a data set of fish caught within lakes from the middle Solimões River. These models were adjusted by non-linear equations, using the sample size of each age class as its weight. The adjustment evaluation of each model was based on the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), the variation of AIC between the models (Δi) and the evidence weights (wi). Both the Logistic (Δi = 0.0) and Gompertz (Δi = 1.12) models were supported by the data, but neither of them was clearly superior (wi, respectively 52.44 and 29.95%). Thus, we propose the use of an averaged-model to estimate the asymptotic length (L∞). The averaged-model, based on Logistic and Gompertz models, resulted in an estimate of L∞=90.36, indicating that the tambaqui would take approximately 25 years to reach average size.