Diet, trophic position of upper St. Lawrence River round goby giants reveals greater dependence on dreissenids with increasing body size

Miano, Andrew; Leblanc, John Paul; Farrell, John M.

doi:10.1016/j.jglr.2021.04.004

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…This technique validated diet shifts described in St. Lawrence River round goby . Diet is a well-known control on Hg bioaccumulation in fishes.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

“…This technique validated diet shifts described in St. Lawrence River round goby. 41 Diet is a well-known control on Hg bioaccumulation in fishes. Our finding that eye lens [Hg] in individual St. Lawrence River round goby decreased as fish aged is in agreement with a diet study that showed young St. Lawrence River round goby individuals consume opportunistically but older ones consume a combination of dreissenid mussels and Hydrobiidae, which causes a decline in δ 15 N (a diet proxy).…”

Section: ■ Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our finding that eye lens [Hg] in individual St. Lawrence River round goby decreased as fish aged is in agreement with a diet study that showed young St. Lawrence River round goby individuals consume opportunistically but older ones consume a combination of dreissenid mussels and Hydrobiidae, which causes a decline in δ 15 N (a diet proxy). 41 Because [Hg] is strongly predicted by the δ 15 N of aquatic organisms, 42,43 it follows that younger round goby individuals are feeding on contaminated prey at a higher trophic level compared to older round goby in the St. Lawrence River. This trend was not detected in muscle tissue [Hg] of the same samples from the St. Lawrence River.…”

Section: ■ Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tracking Fish Lifetime Exposure to Mercury Using Eye Lenses

Miraly

Razavi

Vogl

et al. 2022

Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett.

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Mercury (Hg) uptake in fish is affected by diet, growth, and environmental factors such as primary productivity or oxygen regimes. Traditionally, fish Hg exposure is assessed using muscle tissue or whole fish, reflecting both loss and uptake processes that result in Hg bioaccumulation over entire lifetimes. Tracking changes in Hg exposure of an individual fish chronologically throughout its lifetime can provide novel insights into the processes that affect Hg bioaccumulation. Here we use eye lenses to determine Hg uptake at an annual scale for individual fish. We assess the widely distributed benthic round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) from the Baltic Sea, Lake Erie, and the St. Lawrence River. We aged layers of the eye lens using proportional relationships between otolith length at age and eye lens radius for each individual fish. Mercury concentrations were quantified using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The eye lens Hg content revealed that Hg exposure increased with age in Lake Erie and the Baltic Sea but decreased with age in the St. Lawrence River, a trend not detected using muscle tissues. This novel methodology for measuring Hg concentration over time with eye lens chronology holds promise for quantifying how global change processes like increasing hypoxia affect the exposure of fish to Hg.

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“…This technique validated diet shifts described in St. Lawrence River round goby . Diet is a well-known control on Hg bioaccumulation in fishes.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: ■ Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ■ Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Tracking Fish Lifetime Exposure to Mercury Using Eye Lenses

Miraly

Razavi

Vogl

et al. 2022

Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett.

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“…All other studies to the best of our knowledge have characterised the round goby as a generalist fish consuming a wide range of taxa in the USLR (Kipp & Ricciardi, 2012; Miano et al., 2021), Great Lakes (Foley et al., 2017) and other invaded ecosystems (Herlevi et al., 2018). We provide the first evidence that invasive round gobies, which are considered a dietary resource generalist at the population level, can show important individual specialisation in diet that may be mediated by environmental conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological impact of a generalist invader in the aquatic food web is mediated by environmental context

Charette,

Derry

2024

Freshwater Biology

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Freshwater ecosystems are threatened by the introduction of invasive species. Generalist invaders often compete with native species for shared resources, resulting in possible native species niche displacement. However, environmental heterogeneity may modulate the level of individual specialisation in invasive species, altering the outcome of interspecific competition between invasive and native species. The objectives of our study were to (1) evaluate the environmental context of dietary specialisation and trophic position of an invasive species according to the Environmental Matching Hypothesis (EMH), and (2) consider how the environmental context of invasive species dietary resource use may influence the dietary niche of native species competing for similar resources. Resource use, trophic position and dietary niche were determined using gut content and stable isotope analyses for the invasive round goby (Negobius melanostomus) and the native yellow perch (Perca flavescens), along environmental gradients in an invaded fluvial ecosystem. Our results were in support of EMH for the invader diet and resource specialisation, but not trophic position. Under environmental conditions of high water‐conductivity, round gobies were generalists feeding mostly on pelagic prey. Under more challenging environmental conditions of low water‐conductivity, the invader specialised on preferred high‐quality benthic prey. The ecological impact of the round goby was greatest at low water‐conductivity sites where the invader was a benthic specialist; there was a greater relative dietary niche overlap between the invader and the native species. Our study uniquely illustrates how invasive species’ resource specialisation can be modulated by spatial environmental heterogeneity within ecosystems, and how this can subsequently alter the ecological impact of the invader on native species in aquatic food webs.

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“…For stable isotope analysis, we focused on a subset of the round goby population, which fell into a standardized range of size and condition. This way, we wanted to eliminate the influence of confounding factors, such as the well‐documented dietary switch of round gobies from arthropods to mollusks around 10–13 cm total length (Brush et al, 2012; Miano et al, 2021), and body condition (Karlson et al, 2018). More specifically, we excluded juvenile individuals ( n = 3), individuals with a standard length of ≥10 cm ( n = 9), and with a condition factor K ≤ 1.7 or K ≥ 2.4 ( n = 11).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential habitat use of a notorious invasive fish, the round goby, in a translocation‐relevant system

Bussmann

Hirsch

Lehmann

et al. 2022

Ecology and Evolution

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Anthropogenic structures can form novel ecosystem niches. Invasive species are often particularly successful in occupying these habitats and utilize them as beachheads for further spread. The invasive round goby (Neogobius melanostomus, Pallas 1814), an inherently bottom‐dwelling fish, uses vertical harbor walls as habitat, enabling them to reach boats (i.e., potential translocation vectors). To evaluate the relevance of vertical habitat use for population dynamics and translocation, we exemplary investigated a population of round gobies in a harbor ecosystem. Specifically, we investigated differences in trophic niche characteristics, individual trophic specialization, phenotypic traits, and breeding frequency in wall versus bottom‐dwelling round gobies. Habitat‐characteristic dietary signatures indicated habitat partitioning during the breeding season. Trophic niches overlapped but were clearly distinguishable between the habitats: Walls were inhabited by 1.4 times more trophic generalists than specialists, while the bottom was inhabited by 2.1 times more trophic specialists. Breeding frequency was 24 times higher on the walls than on the bottom. After the reproductive season, we found a higher similarity in trophic ecology of gobies inhabiting the two habitats, and differences in abundance, size, and condition. These results are in line with winter migrations to deeper habitats, which are common in round gobies in lentic and marine ecosystems. Our results suggest a high potential for microgeographic adaptation to either horizontal or vertical habitat use in invasive round gobies. We demonstrated that male gobies using the walls during the breeding season are larger and heavier, suggesting that wall climbing may select for more competitive individuals. Additionally, the overall abundance of round gobies likely increases with the additional use of vertical habitat space, which may lead to higher propagule pressure. The ability to exploit anthropogenic habitats, and a higher translocation probability of competitive individuals, can contribute to the invasion success of round gobies in anthropogenically influenced aquatic systems.

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Diet, trophic position of upper St. Lawrence River round goby giants reveals greater dependence on dreissenids with increasing body size

Cited by 9 publications

References 41 publications

Tracking Fish Lifetime Exposure to Mercury Using Eye Lenses

Tracking Fish Lifetime Exposure to Mercury Using Eye Lenses

Ecological impact of a generalist invader in the aquatic food web is mediated by environmental context

Differential habitat use of a notorious invasive fish, the round goby, in a translocation‐relevant system

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