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Trophic complexity of small fish in nearshore food webs

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Abstract

Small nearshore fishes are an important part of lacustrine and functional diversity and link pelagic and benthic habitats by serving as prey for larger nearshore and offshore fishes. However, the trophic complexity of these small nearshore fishes is often unrecognized and detailed studies of their role in food webs are lacking. Here, we examined niche space patterns of small nearshore fish species using Bayesian analyses of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data in nine freshwater lakes that are among the largest lakes in Minnesota. We found considerable variability in niche areas within species and high variability in niche overlap across species. At the assemblage level, niche overlap (average diet overlap of all species pairs at a lake) decreased as whole-lake species richness increased, possibly indicating a greater degree of resource specialization in more speciose lakes. Overall fish niche space was weakly but significantly related to niche space of their invertebrate prey. Although nearshore benthic resources contributed to fish diets in all lakes, all fish species also had non-negligible and variable contributions from pelagic zooplankton. This inter- and intraspecific variability in trophic niche space likely contributes to the multi-level trophic complexity, functional diversity, and potentially food web resilience to ecosystem changes.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability: Code for analyses were modified from the SIBER and tRophicPosition packages in R: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=SIBER  and https://cran.r-project.org/package=tRophicPosition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Jaime LeDuc, Ryan Maki, Will French, Robert Hell, Matthew Santo, and Jodie Hirsch for field and laboratory assistance. We also acknowledge Minnesota Department of Natural Resources staff who collected and processed samples used for this analysis. We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for suggestions that greatly improved the manuscript. This paper is contribution number 640 from the Natural Resources Research Institute-University of Minnesota Duluth (NRRI-UMD).

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the Minnesota Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center (MAISRC) and the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), and NRRI-UMD.

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  1. Natural Resources Research Institute, University of Minnesota Duluth, 5013 Miller Trunk Highway, Duluth, MN, 55811, USA

    Holly A. Wellard Kelly, Katya E. Kovalenko, Valerie J. Brady & Joshua D. Dumke

  2. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Division of Fish and Wildlife, 500 Lafayette Rd, St. Paul, MN, 55155, USA

    Tyler D. Ahrenstorff, Bethany J. Bethke & Heidi M. Rantala

  3. Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 135 Skok Hall, 2003 Upper Buford Cr, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Gretchen J. A. Hansen

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10750_2021_4570_MOESM1_ESM.eps

Supplemental Information Fig. 1 Isotopic niche areas (SEA) for species at each lake and percent niche overlap. Standard ellipse areas contain 95% of the data for each fish species present at each lake. a) Mille Lacs (ML), Cass (CAS), Winnibigoshish (WIN), Kabetogama (KAB), Lake of the Woods (LOW). b) Rainy (RAIN), Vermilion (VERM), Leech (LEC), and Upper and Lower Red Lakes (Red). Tables represent the percent niche overlap between each species present in a lake. Note: not all species were collected in each lake. Fish species include: YOY black crappie (BLC), bluntnose minnow (BNM), YOY smallmouth bass (SMB), YOY largemouth bass (LMB), Johnny darter (JND), spottail shiner (SPO), white sucker (WTS), YOY yellow perch (YEP) (EPS 8521 kb)

10750_2021_4570_MOESM2_ESM.eps

Supplemental Information Fig. 2 Relationship between invertebrate prey niche areas (SEAb modes) and proportion of invertebrate niche area used by fish (fish/invertebrate SEAb modes ± 95% credibility intervals) at each lake for individual fish species. We present p-values and correlation coefficients (r) when significant. Lakes include: Cass (CAS), Kabetogama (KAB), Leech (LEC), Lake of the Woods (LOW), Mille Lacs (ML), Rainy (RAIN), Upper and Lower Red Lakes (RED), Vermilion (VERM), and Winnibigoshish (WIN). A smaller proportion of the invertebrate niche area is used by some fish species as invertebrate niche space gets larger, although the relationship is only significant for white sucker. Fish species include: YOY black crappie (BLC), bluntnose minnow (BNM), YOY smallmouth bass (SMB), YOY largemouth bass (LMB), Johnny darter (JND), spottail shiner (SPO), white sucker (WTS), YOY yellow perch (YEP) (EPS 2008 kb)

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Wellard Kelly, H.A., Kovalenko, K.E., Ahrenstorff, T.D. et al. Trophic complexity of small fish in nearshore food webs. Hydrobiologia 848, 2505–2521 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04570-5

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