Habitat complexity and individual variation in diet and morphology of a fish species associated with macrophytes

Abstract

Ecologists have long relied on niche theory to describe the ecology of a species as a whole, by treating individuals as ecologically equivalent (Bolnick et al., 2003). However, the niche of a species can vary as a result of a variation in the population's niche width or a variation in the individual's niche breadth (Abbey-Lee, Gaiser,

Contrasting structural complexity differentiate hunting strategy in an ambush apex predator

“…When foraging in the pelagic areas, there is no structural complexity to aid cover or camou age for ambush predation, and a search-based foraging mode is likely more effective. Low environmental complexity may induce individual differentiation in food source and higher inter-individual trophic niche 33,48,91 , which are in line with our observations in this study.…”

Contrasting structural complexity differentiate hunting strategy in an ambush apex predator

“…When foraging in the pelagic areas, there is no structural complexity to aid cover or camouflage for ambush predation, and a search-based foraging mode is likely to be more effective. Low environmental complexity may induce individual differentiation in food source and a higher inter-individual trophic niche 18,33,35 , which are in line with our observations in this study. www.nature.com/scientificreports/ Potential dietary specialization.…”

“…Considering similarity in prey availability, intraspecific competition for prey was more likely to be higher in the HSC lake (larger pike stock, see Study site description), where the ratio of prey per pike capita was lower. Besides prey resources, pike in the LSC lake may compete more for available preferred structured habitats than in the HSC lake 18 . If this were true, we would expect a high variation in horizontal space use depending on whether an individual will find a structured spot with/without a conspecific.…”

Trophic ecology of the juveniles of two jack species (Caranx latus and C. hippos) in contrasted tropical estuaries

“…This would explain the high level of prey digestion in some of the stomachs analyzed and might have contributed to bias our results, by J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f further precluding identification of the prey items with high digestibility. Within estuarine systems, the types and abundances of the prey available for foraging fish strongly vary according to habitat type (Svanbäck and Eklöv, 2002;Lecomte and Dodson, 2005;Cardozo et al, 2020), which partly contributes to diet changes in the predators exhibiting seasonal or size-related shifts in habitat use (Stevens et al, 2007;Ferreira et al, 2016;. However, juvenile jacks are highly mobile within estuaries, using a wide diversity of estuarine habitats irrespective of their age (Medeiros et al, 2017).…”