Diet seasonality and food overlap of Perca fluviatilis (Actinopterygii: Perciformes: Percidae) and Rutilus rutilus (Actinopterygii: Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae) juveniles: A case study on Bovan Reservoir, Serbia

Abstract

European perch, Perca fluviatilis Linnaeus, 1758 and roach, Rutilus rutilus (Linnaeus, 1758) are the most common species present in mesotrophic and eutrophic lakes throughout Europe. Their biomass, especially in juvenile stages, contributes the most to the fish production of these ecosystems. In Bovan Reservoir, these two species constitute the bulk of the juvenile fish biomass. This study aimed to investigate the feeding composition of these two species in order to evaluate their niche overlap due to the availability of resources during different seasons. Traditional diet analysis indices and Kohonen artificial neural network (i.e., a self-organizing map, SOM) were used to investigate the diet of 158 individuals of both species and evaluate their food niche overlap. The indicator value (IndVal) was applied to identify indicator food categories based on which the contents of their alimentary tracts were grouped first into neurons and then into clusters on the SOM. Our results showed that juvenile fish used zooplankton and benthic prey in their diet. Roach often fed on nonanimal prey, while perch of age 0+ used fishes in the diet. Additionally, four clusters of neurons were isolated on the SOM output network. The distribution of perch and roach alimentary tracts in neurons indicated no high degree of competition between them. While diet analyses indices show which food category is generally important in specimensʼ diet, the SOM recognizes those specimens and arranges them together into the same or adjacent neurons based on dominant prey. Understanding fish feeding habits is critical for the development of conservation and management plans. Since Bovan is a eutrophic reservoir, our knowledge of fish feeding habits needs to be considered for stocking strategies in the future.

Feeding Patterns of Fish in Relation to the Trophic Status of Reservoirs: A Case Study of Rutilus rutilus (Linnaeus, 1758) in Five Fishing Waters in Serbia

“…Juvenile roach primarily feed on zooplankton [67,70,72,73]. Our findings support this statement, with the exception of the roach from the oligotrophic Vlasina Reservoir.…”

“…Opting to standardize the data, whether representing the digestive tract content "coarsely" or in detail, poses the risk of losing information about a substantial portion of the digestive tract content [88,89] and may introduce methodological errors [59]. Consequently, self-organizing maps prove beneficial in the analysis of fish feeding [73], as they adeptly handle nonlinear variables interconnected in complex ways, whether exhibiting normal or skewed distributions [57,59]. Despite their prevalence in biocenology, self-organizing maps and the IndVal index have been utilized sparingly in ecological studies focused on fish feeding [58,59,73].…”

“…Consequently, self-organizing maps prove beneficial in the analysis of fish feeding [73], as they adeptly handle nonlinear variables interconnected in complex ways, whether exhibiting normal or skewed distributions [57,59]. Despite their prevalence in biocenology, self-organizing maps and the IndVal index have been utilized sparingly in ecological studies focused on fish feeding [58,59,73]. As shown on the SOM map, roach were divided into five clusters based on the predominant prey in the diet.…”

“…Radenković et al [73] observed that employing self-organizing maps in the analysis of fish feeding yields a more comprehensive understanding of fish feeding habits, offering insight into both similarities and differences among them. This is attributed to the fact that the greater the distance in the network, the more pronounced the distinction in the models assigned to the neurons.…”