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Stage-structured feeding by freshwater fish assemblages in eastern South Dakota, USA

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Abstract

Aquatic insects undergo substantial shifts in their ecology during development, such as changing from a benthic consumer stage (e.g., larva) to a pelagic non-consumer stage (e.g., non-feeding pupae). Fish may differentially target these life-stages during predation, but the prevalence of this feeding is largely unknown. To determine how stage-specific feeding varies among fish species, we sampled fish diets from four freshwater habitats in southeastern South Dakota, USA. We measured the fraction of gut contents in fish that consisted of prey that do not feed in the aquatic food web (e.g., terrestrial insects or non-consumer stages of aquatic insects). We also compared estimates of dietary overlap using methods that either included or did not include prey life-stage information. When averaged across 22 fish species, 17% (10 to 25%) of diet dry mass consisted of prey that were not consumers in the aquatic food web. Non-consumer prey came from a mix of terrestrial subsidies (11%) and non-feeding life-stages of aquatic prey (6%). The overall fraction of non-consumer prey varied widely among fish species, from ~ 2% in a darter (Etheostoma nigrum) to ~ 52% in a minnow (Notropis stramineus). Adding prey life-stage information to estimates of dietary overlap revealed the presence of prey life-stage specialists and generalists in the fish populations, causing overlap to decline. The magnitude of this decline increased as individual fish ate more non-larval stages of aquatic insects. These results reveal the importance of considering developmental changes in prey when estimating fish diets and indicate that stage-structured prey partitioning reduces dietary overlap.

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Data availability

All supporting data and R script for analysis can be found at: https://github.com/Abrahamkanz/stageguildms.

Code availability

All supporting data and R script for analysis can be found at: https://github.com/Abrahamkanz/stageguildms.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Alexis Culley, Katy McCarthy, Sarah Lane, Jacob Ridgway, and Justin Pomeranz for help in the field and the lab.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation (#1837233 and #1560048), and by the University of South Dakota Graduate Research and Creativity Grant.

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  1. Abraham J. Kanz

    Present address: The Department of Natural Resource Ecology & Management, Oklahoma State University, 474-B Agricultural Hall, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA

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  1. Department of Biology, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, USA

    Abraham J. Kanz & Jeff S. Wesner

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  1. Abraham J. Kanz
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Correspondence to Jeff S. Wesner.

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All procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of South Dakota (03–03-18-21C).

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Kanz, A.J., Wesner, J.S. Stage-structured feeding by freshwater fish assemblages in eastern South Dakota, USA. Environ Biol Fish 105, 905–916 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-022-01296-8

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