Trophic response to ecological conditions of habitats: Evidence from trophic variability of freshwater fish

Autor: Bohyung Choi, Min-Ho Jang, Kyung-Lak Lee, Kyung-Hoon Shin, Hyun-Woo Kim, Yuko Takizawa, Yoshito Chikaraishi, Hye-Ji Oh, Kwang-Hyeon Chang, Changhwa Lee
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Ecology and Evolution
Ecology and Evolution, Vol 10, Iss 14, Pp 7250-7260 (2020)
ISSN: 2045-7758
Popis: To adapt to ecological and environmental conditions, species can change their ecological niche (e.g., interactions among species) and function (e.g., prey‐predation, diet competition, and habitat segregation) at the species and guild levels. Stable isotope analysis of bulk carbon and nitrogen of organisms has conventionally been used to evaluate such adaptabilities in the scenopoetic and bionomic views as the isotopic niche width.Compound‐specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) of nitrogen within amino acids provides trophic information without any disruption of scenopoetic views in the isotope ratios, unlike conventional bulk isotope analysis provides both information and therefore frequently hinders its usefulness for trophic information.We performed CSIA of amino acids to understand the trophic variability of the pike gudgeon Pseudogobio esocinus and largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides as representative specialist and generalist fish species, respectively, from 16 ecologically variable habitats in the four major rivers of Korea.There was little variation (1σ) in the trophic position (TP) among habitats for P. esocinus (± 0.2); however, there was considerably large variation for M. salmoides (± 0.6). The TP of M. salmoides was negatively correlated with the benthic invertebrate indices of the habitats, whereas the TP of P. esocinus showed no significant correlation with any indices. Thus, these two representative fish species have different trophic responses to ecological conditions, which is related to known differences in the trophic niche between specialists (i.e., small niche width) and generalists (i.e., large niche width).Over the past four decades, the conventional bulk isotope analysis has not been capable of deconvoluting “scenopoetic” and “bionomic” information. However, in the present study, we demonstrated that the CSIA of amino acids could isolate trophic niches from the traditional ecological niche composed of trophic and habitat information and evaluated how biological and ecological indices influence the trophic response of specialists and generalists.
We first applied compound‐specific stable isotope analysis of amino acids to the ecological niche studies, in order to isolate trophic niche that is accompanied with habitat niche in the conventional bulk isotope method.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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