Latitudinal trends in habitat quality of shallow‑water flatfish nurseries

Abstract

The habitat quality of European shallow-water nurseries was studied for 3 common flatfish species based on juvenile growth conditions. Field growth of 0-group plaice Pleuronectes platessa, flounder Platichthys flesus and sole Solea solea, from both published and unpublished studies, was compared with maximum growth predicted by a bioenergetics model based on the dynamic energy budget theory. In plaice and flounder, realized growth ratio decreased consistently during the growing season in most of the nurseries analyzed, indicating a widespread pattern of declining conditions. In sole, growth performance was not maximal, but as opposed to the other species, no clear temporal trend in realized growth ratio was observed. A latitudinal comparison of realized growth ratio over the various nurseries indicated clear positive trends for plaice and flounder, with better growth conditions at northern latitudes. In sole, despite some variability, the same trend was found during part of the summer. In the absence of clear gradients in benthic prey biomass, we hypothesize that increased food limitation in southern locations is most likely caused by interspecific competition reducing maximum individual intake rates. These results suggest that, in the context of global warming, habitat quality of southern European nurseries for juvenile growth may be particularly affected by the combined interaction of food and thermal constraints.

Shifts in nursery habitat utilization by 0-group plaice in the western Dutch Wadden Sea

“…Furthermore, there is no strong support for size-selective predation by fishes and birds on 0-group plaice in summer (van der Veer et al, 1997). The results of this study are also in line with previous observations for the Balgzand intertidal (Teal et al, 2008;van der Veer et al, 2010), as well as for a number of European nurseries (Ciotti et al, 2010;Freitas et al, 2012;Ciotti et al, 2013a,b). This again suggests that variations in food conditions and hence growth potential cannot explain the shifts in habitat use between 1986 and 2009.…”

“…In those cases where size distributions overlapped or were close together (mostly in 1986 due to the presence of I-and II-group plaice), sagittal otoliths were routinely checked for the presence of annual rings by eye. Numbers caught were first corrected for size-selective mesh and catch efficiency according to Kuipers (1975) and Dapper (1978) for the 2-m beam trawl, and after Bergman et al (1989) (2001,2009,2010) and Freitas et al (2010), and the full procedure is described in Freitas et al (2012). In a rather constant environment (see Kooijman, 2010), the model equations describing the dynamics of the state variables (reserve, structure and reproductive buffer) simplify greatly and in case of growth, become mathematically equivalent to the Von Bertalanffy growth model (Kooijman, 2010).…”

Growth conditions of 0-group plaice Pleuronectes platessa in the western Wadden Sea as revealed by otolith microstructure analysis

“…Previous work on various flatfish species in different nurseries has confirmed 189 robustness of the DEB parameters (Freitas et al, 2012). …”

A comparison of growth in two juvenile flatfish species in the Dutch Wadden Sea: Searching for a mechanism for summer growth reduction in flatfish nurseries

“…At larger spatial scales, temporal variability in growth among various flatfish species has also been found (Amara, 2003;Fonseca et al, 2006;Hurst & Abookire, 2006;van der Veer et al, 2010;Freitas et al, 2012Freitas et al, , 2016Ciotti et al, 2013a,b). Growth varies not only among nursery areas but also among cohorts or age groups of a given species and even among subcohorts during settlement (Fonseca et al, 2006).…”