Abstract
Invasion of non-native fishes threatens freshwater biodiversity worldwide. Yet, detailed estimates of population demography for invasive species, such as population size and body size, are rarely integrated in evaluating aquatic community responses. Our study capitalised on detailed brook trout population demographic data collected for a replicated whole lake ecosystem experiment involving experimental harvesting of exotic brook trout in nine mountain lakes. We applied environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding and morphological taxonomy to examine the response of crustacean zooplankton and macroinvertebrate communities to gradients in brook trout effective density and lake elevation. Density-dependent effects of brook trout on crustacean zooplankton and macroinvertebrate communities were detected even decades after their first introductions (between 1926 & 1980). However, they were moderated by environmental factors such as elevation, lake maximum depth and dissolved organic carbon. Elevation was important in structuring crustacean zooplankton and macroinvertebrate community composition. While there were differences in explanatory variables when describing communities characterized by eDNA metabarcoding and morphological taxonomy, the principal environmental factors that structured the communities were similar. Our paper highlights persisting density-dependent impacts of exotic trout on invertebrate communities even decades after first introduction, and it considers the conservation implications for lake restoration.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the Environmental Data Initiative repository (Trépanier-Leroux et al., 2023): https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/9fae641495fea570c60f0ad2777344b8
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Acknowledgements
We thank M. Lagacé, M. Salamon, S. Urschel, and A. Yaghi for field assistance. A. Zhukova contributed to enumeration of macroinvertebrate samples. We thank J. Littlefair and G. Martin for their laboratory assistance with eDNA metabarcoding. We thank D. Glaser, B. Brookes, J. Farkas, T. Ridgeon, N. Dupont, T. Bernos, L. Bogaard, H. Tunna, B. Kelley, M. Lagacé, and M. Tissier for conducting the mark-recapture experiments (Concordia University Animal Ethics permit #30007841). We thank anonymous reviewers whose detailed and constructive comments helped us to improve our manuscript.
Funding
This project was funded by a Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Nature et Technologie (FRQNT) team grant 254557 to AMD, MEC, and DJF, and by an NSERC Strategic Grant STPGP 494015–16 to AMD and DJF. DTL received a scholarship from the Quebec Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Recherche et Technologie (FRQNT) excellence center Groupe Interuniversitaire en Limnologie (GRIL), Grant No. GRIL-PCP-19E02.
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DTL, DJF, MEC, and AMD: conceptually designed the project. DJF: was responsible for leading the collection of brook trout population demography data. DTL: enumerated morphological community samples and conducted the eDNA laboratory research. MCY: conducted eDNA field sampling and calculated brook trout demography metrics. LA: conducted the metabarcoding sequence bioinformatics. DTL: conducted statistical analyses with the help of MCY, and she produced the figures. AMD: led the writing and all authors contributed to editing the manuscript.
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Trépanier-Leroux, D., Yates, M.C., Astorg, L. et al. Density-dependent effects of exotic brook trout on aquatic communities in mountain lakes revealed by environmental DNA and morphological taxonomy. Hydrobiologia 851, 1489–1512 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-023-05398-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-023-05398-x