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Determining the trophic guilds of fishes and macroinvertebrates in a seagrass food web

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Abstract

We established trophic guilds of macroinvertebrate and fish taxa using correspondence analysis and a hierarchical clustering strategy for a seagrass food web in winter in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. To create the diet matrix, we characterized the trophic linkages of macroinvertebrate and fish taxa present inHalodule wrightii seagrass habitat areas within the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge (Florida) using binary data, combining dietary links obtained from relevant literature for macroinvertebrates with stomach analysis of common fishes collected during January and February of 1994. Heirarchical average-linkage cluster analysis of the 73 taxa of fishes and macroinvertebrates in the diet matrix yielded 14 clusters with diet similarity ≥ 0.60. We then used correspondence analysis with three factors to jointly plot the coordinates of the consumers (identified by cluster membership) and of the 33 food sources. Correspondence analysis served as a visualization tool for assigning each taxon to one of eight trophic guilds: herbivores, detritivores, suspension feeders, omnivores, molluscivores, meiobenthos consumers, macrobenthos consumers and piscivores. These trophic groups, corss-classified with major taxonomic groups, were further used to develop consumer compartments in a network analysis model of carbon flow in this seagrass ecosystem. The method presented here should greatly improve the development of future network models of food webs by providing an objective procedure for aggregating trophic groups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Coastal and Marine Resources, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, North Carolina

    Joseph J. Luczkovich & Jeffrey C. Johnson

  2. Department of Biology, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, North Carolina

    Joseph J. Luczkovich & Robert R. Christian

  3. Division of Water Quality, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 943 Washington Square Mall, 27889, Washington, North Carolina

    Garcy P. Ward

  4. Department of Sociology, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, North Carolina

    Jeffrey C. Johnson

  5. Department of Zoology, University of Port Elizabeth, P.O. Box 1600, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

    Daniel Baird

  6. United States Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, 26 Ganneston Drive, 04330, Augusta, Maine

    Hilary Neckles

  7. United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, Missouri Field Station, University of Missouri-Columbia, 302 Gentry Hall, 65211, Columbia, Missouri

    William M. Rizzo

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  1. Joseph J. Luczkovich
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Luczkovich, J.J., Ward, G.P., Johnson, J.C. et al. Determining the trophic guilds of fishes and macroinvertebrates in a seagrass food web. Estuaries 25, 1143–1163 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692212

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