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Seasonal Mass Migration of Water Boatmen (Hemiptera: Corixidae) as a Wetland–River Linkage and Dietary Subsidy to Riverine Fish

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Abstract

Cross-boundary movements of organisms can act as important ecosystem linkages by subsidizing food webs. We investigated the magnitude and implications of a little understood food web subsidy in the form of migrating aquatic insects, corixids (Hemiptera: Corixidae), that fly from geographically isolated wetlands into large rivers in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of North America every fall, to overwinter. We found that these migrations can lead to drastically increased riverine corixid densities as high as ~ 3,000 individuals/m2 within areas of standing or slow-moving water, with ~ 500 g of corixid material entering every meter of water immediately adjacent to the banks of rivers, where landings are concentrated. This movement shifts the species assemblage in rivers to one dominated by wetland-breeding species, namely Callicorixa audeni, Sigara bicoloripennis, and Sigara decoratella. Stomach content analyses of fish reveal that goldeye (Hiodon alosoides), mooneye (Hiodon tergisus), longnose sucker (Catostomus catostomus), and white sucker (Catostomus commersoni) make heavy use of this forage subsidy, with corixids occurring in 97% to 100% of these fishes and accounting for 38% to 97% of stomach contents by weight during the corixid migration period in fall. We estimate that seasonal migrations could result in ~ 1500 metric tons of corixids entering the North and South Saskatchewan rivers within Saskatchewan, and ~ 12,000 tons of biomass moving between wetlands and rivers across the entire PPR. Our study has demonstrated an extensive cross-boundary flux that occurs between spatially separated wetland and river ecosystems, highlighting a need for conservation to ensure that this connection is maintained.

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Data Availability

Data is available at Srayko, S., Jardine, T., Phillips, I., Chivers, D. (2022) Seasonal mass migration of water boatmen (Hemiptera: Corixidae) as a wetland–river linkage and dietary subsidy to riverine fish. Federated Research Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.20383/102.0541

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dale Parker of Aquatax Consulting for his assistance with corixid identification; John Acorn for his many observations; Iona Tangri, Joel Houston, Matthew Schultz, Kirsten Sepos, Troutreach Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency’s Saskatoon office for field and lab assistance; Eva Enders and Doug Watkinson for facilitating observations in Manitoba; Chance Prestie and J.J. Merkowsky for providing technical reports on fisheries in the Saskatchewan River system. This research was funded by Troutreach Saskatchewan; the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, the Saskatchewan Fish and Wildlife Development Fund, NSERC Create for Water Security, Ducks Unlimited Canada, NSERC Discovery grants to DPC and TDJ, MITACS, and Ph.D. grants from the Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, 112 Science Pl, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 5C8, Canada

    Stephen H. Srayko, Iain D. Phillips & Douglas P. Chivers

  2. School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan, 117 Science Pl, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 5C8, Canada

    Timothy D. Jardine

  3. Troutreach Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, 9 Lancaster Road, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, S6J 1M8, Canada

    Stephen H. Srayko & Iain D. Phillips

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Srayko, S.H., Jardine, T.D., Phillips, I.D. et al. Seasonal Mass Migration of Water Boatmen (Hemiptera: Corixidae) as a Wetland–River Linkage and Dietary Subsidy to Riverine Fish. Ecosystems 25, 1571–1588 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-021-00734-5

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