Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

A comparison of juvenile bonefish diets in Eleuthera, The Bahamas, and Florida, U.S.

  • Published:
Environmental Biology of Fishes Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Bonefish (Albula spp.) are a popular recreational gamefish; however, there is currently limited information on bonefish early life history stages. Here we examine the diet of juvenile bonefish (Albula vulpes) in Eleuthera, The Bahamas, and provide a comparison to previously collected data on bonefish (Albula spp., primarily A. goreensis) in Florida. In Eleuthera, amphipods and carideans were the most important prey items found in the digestive tracts of 111 juvenile bonefish collected in 2011 and 2012. There was no difference in the ranking of 14 prey taxa between years, however, there was a difference between sample locations on Eleuthera, The Bahamas, with fish being from either Rock Sound (west coast) or Savannah Sound and Half Sound (east coast). Prey species diversity, evenness, and richness were all lower on the west coast compared to the east coast of Eleuthera. There was also a higher probability of an empty stomach with larger bonefish on the west coast, higher amphipod and caridean abundances in juvenile bonefish on the west coast, and higher amphipod abundance with larger bonefish of Eleuthera. Differences may be related to variation in habitat structure and/or prey availability between the sample locations of the island. There was no statistical difference in ranking between the 17 prey taxa categories in Eleuthera A. vulpes and Florida A. spp (86% A. goreensis) juvenile bonefish stomachs; however, only one taxon (Amphipoda) occurred in the top-five-ranked taxa between the two studies. Results reported here provide the first insight into juvenile A. vulpes diet and how bonefish diet may vary across embayments, regions, and species.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adams AJ, Dahlgren CP, Kellison GT, Kendall MS, Layman CA, Ley JA, Nagelkerken I, Serafy JE (2006) Nursery function of tropical back-reef systems. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 318:287–301

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adams AJ, Wolfe RK, Tringali MD, Wallace EM, Kellison GT (2007) Rethinking the status of Albula spp. biology in the Caribbean and western Atlantic. In: Ault J (ed) Biology and Management of the World Tarpon and Bonefish Fisheries. CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp 203–2015

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Adams A, Guindon K, Horodysky A, et al (2012) The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2012

  • Baker R, Buckland A, Sheaves M (2014) Fish gut content analysis: robust measures of diet composition. Fish Fish 15(1):170–177

  • Bates D, Maechler M, Bolker B, Walker S (2015) Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. J Stat Softw 67(1):1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beck MW, Heck KL, Able KW, Childers DL, Eggleston DB, Gillanders BM, Halpern B, Hays CG, Hoshino K, Minello TJ, Orth RJ (2001) The identification, conservation, and management of estuarine and marine nurseries for fish and invertebrates: a better understanding of the habitats that serve as nurseries for marine species and the factors that create site-specific variability in nursery quality will improve conservation and management of these areas. AIBS Bull 51(8):633–641

    Google Scholar 

  • Brownscombe JW, Danylchuk AJ, Adams AJ, Black B, Boucek R, Power M, Rehage JS, Santos RO, Fisher RW, Horn B, Haak CR, Morton S, Hunt J, Ahrens R, Allen MS, Shenker J, Cooke SJ (in review) bonefish in South Florida: status, threats. Environ Biol Fish

  • Colton DE, Alevizon WS (1983) Feeding ecology of bonefish in Bahamian waters. Trans Am Fish Soc 112(2):178–184

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cortés E (1997) A critical review of methods of studying fish feeding based on analysis of stomach contents: application to elasmobranch fishes. Can J Fish Aquat Sci 54:726–738

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crabtree RE, Stevens C, Snodgrass D, Stengard FJ (1998) Feeding habits of bonefish, Albula vulpes, from the waters of the Florida keys. Fish Bull 96(4):754–766

    Google Scholar 

  • Debrot D, Posada JM (2004) A brief description of the bonefish recreational fishery in Los Roques archipelago National Park, Venezuela. Contrib Mar Sci 37:61–65

    Google Scholar 

  • Fedler T (2010) The economic impact of flats fishing in the Bahamas. The Bahamian flats fishing Alliance. Gainesville, Florida

    Google Scholar 

  • Fedler T (2013) Economic Impact of the Florida Keys Flats Fishery 32608:25

  • Fedler AJ, Hayes C (2008) Economic impact of recreational fishing for bonefish, permit and tarpon in Belize for 2007. The Turneffe Atoll Trust, Belize City

  • Fournier DA, Skaug HJ, Ancheta J, Ianelli J, Magnusson A, Maunder M, Nielsen A, Sibert J (2012) AD Model Builder: using differentiation for statistical inference of highly parameterized complex nonlinear models. Optim. Methods Softw., pp. 233–249

  • Frezza PE, Clem SE (2015) Using local fishers knowledge to characterize historical trends in the Florida bay bonefish population and fishery. Environ Biol Fish 98:2187–2202

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heck KL, Crowder LB (1991) Habitat structure and predator-prey interactions in vegetated aquatic systems. In: Habitat structure. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 281–299

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Humston R (2001) Development of movement models to assess the spatial dynamics of marine fish populations. Dissertation, University of Miami

  • Kroloff E, Heinen JT, Rehage JS, Braddock K, Santos RO (In review) A key informant analysis of local ecological knowledge and perceptions of bonefish decline in South Florida. Environ Biol Fish

  • Layman CA, Silliman BR (2002) Preliminary survey and diet analysis of juvenile fishes of an estuarine creek on Andros Island, Bahamas. Bull Mar Sci 70:199–210

    Google Scholar 

  • Liston SE, Frezza PE, Robinson M, Lorenz JJ (2013) Assessment of benthic Fauna communities on Florida keys’ shallow banks as an Indicator of prey availability for bonefish (Albula vulpes). Vero Beach, Florida

    Google Scholar 

  • Macdonald JS, Green R (1983) Redundancy of variables used to describe importance of prey species in fish diets. Can J Fish Aquat Sci 40:635–637

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meyrick T (2017) Caribbean challenge initiative

  • Nelson JS (2006) Fishes of the world. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Orth RJ, Heck KL, van Montfrans J (1984) Faunal communities in seagrass beds: a review of the influence of plant structure and prey characteristics on predator-prey relationships. Estuaries 7(4):339–350

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santos RO, Rehage JS, Adams AJ, Black BD, Osborne J, Kroloff EK (2017) Quantitative assessment of a data-limited recreational bonefish fishery using a time-series of fishing guides reports. PLoS One 12:e0184776

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Snodgrass D, Crabtree RE, Serafy JE (2008) Abundance, growth, and diet of young-of-the-year bonefish (Albula spp.) off the Florida keys, USA. Bull Mar Sci-Miami 82:185–193

    Google Scholar 

  • Thayer GW, Bjorndal KA, Ogden JC, Williams SL, Zieman JC (1984) Role of Larger Herbivores in Seagrass Communities. Estuaries 7(4):351

  • Venables WN, Ripley BD (2002) Modern applied statistics with S. 4th edn.. Springer, New York, ISBN 0-387-95457-0

  • Wallace EM, Tringali MD (2010) Identification of a novel member in the family Albulidae (bonefishes). J Fish Biol 76(8):1972–1983

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wallace EM, Tringali MD (2016) Fishery composition and evidence of population structure and hybridization in the Atlantic bonefish species complex (Albula spp.). Mar Biol 163:142

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeileis A, Kleiber C, Jackman S (2008) Regression models for count data in R. J Stat Softw 27(8)

  • Zuur A, Ieno EN, Walker N, Saveliev AA, Smith GM (2009) Mixed effects models and extensions in ecology with R. Springer, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was granted approval by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC – 2010-0067) at the University of Massachusetts. We thank the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and thank the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust for funding this project, and Justin Lewis and Liane Nowell for their assistance with collection and processing fish specimens. In addition, we thank Elizabeth Wallace for genetic identification and Jack Finn for assistance in data exploration. Many thanks to Aaron Shultz and the staff at the Cape Eleuthera Institute for making this study possible. Andrew Clark at the College of Charleston provided access to dissecting scopes. And we would like to finally thank Derke Snodgrass, Richard Heard, James Thomas, and Ron Shimek, for their assistance in identifying unknown prey items.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Conservation & Intercampus Marine Science Graduate Program, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 160 Holdsworth Way, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    Lucas P. Griffin, Christopher R. Haak & Andy J. Danylchuk

  2. Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory, Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Dr, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Jacob W. Brownscombe

  3. Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 160 Holdsworth Way, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    Curtice R. Griffin

Authors
  1. Lucas P. Griffin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Christopher R. Haak
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Jacob W. Brownscombe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Curtice R. Griffin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Andy J. Danylchuk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lucas P. Griffin.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Griffin, L.P., Haak, C.R., Brownscombe, J.W. et al. A comparison of juvenile bonefish diets in Eleuthera, The Bahamas, and Florida, U.S.. Environ Biol Fish 102, 147–157 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-018-0822-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-018-0822-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation