Apparent extirpation of prey fish communities following the introduction of Northern Pike (&lt;em&gt;Esox lucius&lt;/em&gt;)

Nicholson, Michele E.; Rennie, Michael D.; Mills, Kenneth H.

doi:10.22621/cfn.v129i2.1697

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The presence of large piscivorous perch is also known to hinder the reestablishment of roach, unless coexistence of perch and roach is mediated by the presence of pike (Persson, De Roos, & Bystrom, 2006). Monitoring small lakes after the introduction of perch or pike revealed rapid extinction (within <50 years) of nine-spined and three-spined sticklebacks (Englund et al, 2009) and small cyprinidae (Nicholson, Rennie, & Mills, 2015). The fact that piscivores enter the best models only in combination with depth clearly suggests that their impact on prey species is sufficiently strong to induce extinction in deep lakes, but this outcome is less likely in shallow lakes confirming the complex relationships between piscivores, preys and depth already emphasized in a previous study of the very same system (Englund et al, 2009).…”

Section: Piscivorous Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biotic and abiotic drivers of species loss rate in isolated lakes

Bellard

Englund

Hugueny

2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Today, anthropogenic impacts are causing a serious crisis for global biodiversity, with rates of extinction increasing at an unprecedented rate. Extinctions typically occur after a certain delay, and understanding the mechanisms causing delays is a key challenge for both fundamental and applied perspectives. Here, we make use of natural experiments, the isolation of lakes by land uplift in Northern Scandinavia, to examine how yearly extinction rates are affected by time since isolation and a range of abiotic and biotic factors. In this aim, we adapted a model of delayed species loss within isolated communities to test the effects of time since isolation, area, pH, depth and the presence/absence of piscivores on extinction rates. As expected, we found that small and/or young lakes experience a higher annual rate of extinctions per species than larger and/or older ones. Compared to previous studies that were conducted for either young (few thousand years ago) or very old (>10,000 years ago) isolates, we demonstrated over a large and continuous temporal scales (50–5,000 years), similar relationship between extinction rates and age. We also show that extinction rates are modified by local environmental factors such as a strong negative effect of increasing pH. Our results urge for the need to consider the time since critical environmental changes occurred when studying extinction rates. In a wider perspective, our study demonstrates the need to consider extinction debts when modelling future effects of climate change, land‐use changes or biological invasions on biodiversity.

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Section: Piscivorous Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biotic and abiotic drivers of species loss rate in isolated lakes

Bellard

Englund

Hugueny

2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

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“…Specifically, we combined habitat suitability modelling, estimates of connectivity and human transport that drive species introductions, and Bayesian networks to assess the vulnerability of five Pacific salmon species confronted with a novel top predator. Our approach has broad application both inside and outside of Alaska as pike have been introduced and deemed ‘invasive’ throughout much of their non-native distribution and are currently threatening the persistence of a variety of native fishes (Western United States: [ 67 ], Canada: [ 68 ], Spain: [ 69 ], and elsewhere in the Mediterranean: [ 70 ]). In the face of increasing invasions in freshwaters, assessments such as ours provide managers with quantitative methods to assess the impacts of species introductions quickly and efficiently over large geographic areas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vulnerability of Pacific salmon to invasion of northern pike (Esox lucius) in Southcentral Alaska

et al. 2021

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The relentless role of invasive species in the extinction of native biota requires predictions of ecosystem vulnerability to inform proactive management strategies. The worldwide invasion and range expansion of predatory northern pike (Esox lucius) has been linked to the decline of native fishes and tools are needed to predict the vulnerability of habitats to invasion over broad geographic scales. To address this need, we coupled an intrinsic potential habitat modelling approach with a Bayesian network to evaluate the vulnerability of five culturally and economically vital species of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) to invasion by northern pike. This study was conducted along 22,875 stream km in the Southcentral region of Alaska, USA. Pink salmon (O. gorbuscha) were the most vulnerable species, with 15.2% (2,458 km) of their calculated extent identified as “highly” vulnerable, followed closely by chum salmon (O. keta, 14.8%; 2,557 km) and coho salmon (O. kisutch, 14.7%; 2,536 km). Moreover, all five Pacific salmon species were highly vulnerable in 1,001 stream km of shared habitat. This simple to implement, adaptable, and cost-effective framework will allow prioritizing habitats for early detection and monitoring of invading northern pike.

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“…Previous field studies have reported such negative associations, particularly, between top predators and prey species. For example, experiments introducing predatory fishes resulted in decline of minnow species due to direct consumption (Findlay et al., 2000; Mittelbach et al., 1995; Nicholson et al., 2015) or emigration to refugia from predation (e.g. outflow channels; He & Kitchell, 1990).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abiotic factors influence species co‐occurrence patterns of lake fishes

Cordero

Jackson

2021

Journal of Animal Ecology

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1. Abiotic factors are recognized for their strong influence on community structure.Habitat diversity is related to resource availability that influences species richness and abundance. In lakes, surface area and depth have been used as measures of the size and diversity of habitat, and have strong effects on the structure of entire communities.2. We tested whether abiotic variables, related to habitat size, influence cooccurrence patterns of species pairs of fishes by analysing groups of lakes within a specific area and depth categories in two regions in Ontario, Canada.3. We used null models to obtain co-occurrence patterns and standard effect sizes for each species pair within each area and depth category. We estimated standard effect sizes relative to lake area or depth and determined whether species cooccurrence patterns change systematically as these measures of habitat increase.We evaluated groups of species where factors such as predation and habitat filtering have been shown to structure those assemblages, and we tested whether area and depth alter the species associations and our interpretation of these relationships.4. We found significant differences between the observed and expected distributions of regression slopes relating co-occurrences to area and depth in both regions across all species, which indicated the strong influence of both variables on the overall co-occurrence patterns. We observed a significant negative trend of the co-occurrence patterns across lake area categories for the predator-prey species, indicating that the effect of predation was stronger in smaller lakes, but it was reduced in larger lakes, possibly due to increased habitat and resource availability. We show that pooling results as done in standard community null models can lead to Type II errors due to the 'cancellation' of opposing ecological signals. 5.Our results demonstrate the effect of environmental variables on species cooccurrence patterns, but the divergent results obtained between geographical regions suggest that such patterns are context-dependent. This study emphasizes the importance of considering abiotic factors in null models of species cooccurrence to obtain reliable and detailed information about the association patterns between species.

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Apparent extirpation of prey fish communities following the introduction of Northern Pike (<em>Esox lucius</em>)

Cited by 12 publications

References 37 publications

Biotic and abiotic drivers of species loss rate in isolated lakes

Biotic and abiotic drivers of species loss rate in isolated lakes

Vulnerability of Pacific salmon to invasion of northern pike (Esox lucius) in Southcentral Alaska

Abiotic factors influence species co‐occurrence patterns of lake fishes

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