| Literature DB >> 31388030 |
B Hayden1, M L D Palomares2,3, B E Smith4, J H Poelen5.
Abstract
Dietary niche width and trophic position are key functional traits describing a consumer's trophic ecology and the role it plays in a community. However, our understanding of the environmental and biological drivers of both traits is predominantly derived from theory or geographically restricted studies and lacks a broad empirical evaluation. We calculated the dietary niche width and trophic position of 2,938 marine fishes and examined the relationship of both traits with species' maximum length and geographic range, in addition to species richness, productivity, seasonality and water temperature within their geographic range. We used Generalized Additive Models to assess these relationships across seven distinct marine habitat types. Fishes in reef associated habitats typically had a smaller dietary niche width and foraged at a lower trophic position than those in pelagic or demersal regions. Species richness was negatively related to dietary niche width in each habitat. Species range and maximum length both displayed positive associations with dietary niche width. Trophic position was primarily related to species maximum length but also displayed a non-linear relationship with dietary niche width, whereby species of an intermediate trophic position (3-4) had a higher dietary niche width than obligate herbivores or piscivores. Our results indicate that trophic ecology of fishes is driven by several interlinked factors. Although size is a strong predictor of trophic position and the diversity of preys a species can consume, dietary niche width of fishes is also related to prey and competitor richness suggesting that, at a local level, consumer trophic ecology is determined by a trade-off between environmental drivers and biological traits.Entities:
Mesh:
Year: 2019 PMID: 31388030 PMCID: PMC6684618 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-47618-2
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Sci Rep ISSN: 2045-2322 Impact factor: 4.379
Figure 1Variation in the dietary niche width and trophic position of fishes in seven major marine habitats. Each point in represents the dietary niche width or trophic position of a species, boxplots detail the median, interquartile range and twice the interquartile range of species associated with each habitat.
Figure 2Global variation in the dietary niche width of marine fishes. Each point represents the mean niche with of all fish species with a 90% probability of occurring in that location. Species distribution was estimated from AquaMaps and habitat preference is obtained from FishBase.
Results of generalized additive models (GAM) assessing global variation in dietary niche width (DNW) and trophic position (TP) of 2,938 marine fishes.
| Dietary Niche Width | Trophic position | |
|---|---|---|
| n | 2938 | 2938 |
| r2 | 0.39 | 0.34 |
| Dev explained (%) | 39.4 | 34 |
| Coefficient | ||
| Productivity | 3.2** | — |
| Biodiversity | 79.4*** | 8.4*** |
| SST range | 3.9** | 2.6* |
| Range | 9.9*** | 7.4*** |
| Length | 44.4*** | 335.7*** |
| GBIF occurrences | 305.3*** | 21.9*** |
| Trophic position | 67.2*** | NA |
| Dietary Niche Width | NA | 46.8*** |
|
| ||
| Bathydemersal | −0.09 (0.06) | 0.27 (0.06)* |
| Bathypelagic | −0.26 (0.07)*** | 0.50 (0.09)*** |
| Benthopelagic | −0.09 (0.06) | 0.14 (0.06)* |
| Demersal | 0.11 (0.03)*** | 0.07 (0.03)*** |
| Pelagic - Neritic | −0.10 (0.07) | 0.06 (0.07) |
| Pelagic - Oceanic | −0.32 (0.09)*** | 0.09 (0.10) |
| Reef-associated | 0.04 (0.03) | −0.19 (0.03)*** |
Number of species (n), fit of each model (r2), percentage of deviance explained by each model in addition to, the coefficient of variation (equivalent to effect size as all variables were standardized) associated with each predictor variable.
*P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; - removed during model selection; NA not included in model.
Figure 3The effect of variation in predicted drives on the dietary niche width (DNW; left panels) and trophic position (TP; right panels) of 2,938 marine fishes. Plots represent relationships indicated by the best fitting GAM (see Table 1). Smoothed functions presented as solid lines, blue shading denotes 2 standard errors, and grey circles indicate each species.
Figure 4Global variation in the trophic position of marine fishes. Each point represents the mean niche with of all fish species with a 90% probability of occurring in that location. Species distribution was estimated from AquaMaps and habitat preference is obtained from FishBase.