As a deterministic factor in recruitment, the study of the survival success of fish larvae has since the work of Hjort (1914) become crucial to understanding variations in population dynamics. Nutrition and the consequences of larval starvation are now widely accepted as major sources of variability in survival, explaining that the number of offspring recruiting the adult population is not proportional to the spawning biomass. It is in this context that this thesis was written with the aim of identifying in situ the critical periods (i.e. high mortality stages) of the larval development, and defining the environmental conditions that are favourable to them using biochemical and histological condition indices. By carrying out several winter and spring... |