Habitat use and preference of adult perch (Perca fluviatilis L.) in a deep reservoir: variations with seasons, water levels and individuals

Abstract

Perch Perca fluviatilis is a widespread predator in European reservoirs, frequent in open waters but also known to spend a lot of time in the littoral zones. To get insight into how adult perch used and selected their habitat in an environment subject to water level fluctuations, 21 perch were continuously tracked using acoustic telemetry over 2 years in the Bariousses reservoir (France). The different available habitats were characterized by depth classes and substrate types, presence of emerging trees, and presence of tree stumps in the littoral zone. We showed that perch habitat preferences were strongly dependent on the season, except for substrate type, and in line with their habitat use. Surprisingly we did not find any influence of the water level which however reduced the structural complexity of the littoral zone when lowering. In spring and summer, whatever the water level, we observed a strong preference for the littoral zone and complex habitats. In autumn and winter, perch migrated into deeper waters. However, the individual variability of the habitat preferences was quite high. This type of research helps to understand the spatial ecology of fish and provides useful guidance to hydromorphological restoration for fish populations.

The value of quantitative environmental DNA analyses for the management of invasive and endangered native fish

“…At most sites a single pool was sampled from either the main river channel or isolated pool, with sampling focussed on areas containing vegetation (i.e. redfin perch habitat) (Lintermans, 2007; Westrelin et al., 2018). If vegetation was lacking or difficult to access, samples were collected at approximate evenly spaced intervals around the edge of the pool.…”

A role for lakes in revealing the nature of animal movement using high dimensional telemetry systems

“…Even relatively large water bodies up to several hundreds of hectares can be fully covered by positioning systems [20,307] to provide fine-scale positioning of both predator and prey over long periods of time that can be used to answer a variety of questions related to predator-prey interactions. For example, Jacobsen et al [134] identified alternative foraging strategies in acoustically tagged Eurasian perch in mesotrophic and hypereutrophic conditions.…”

“…Understanding roles and identifying pathways through which ecosystem services are generated is therefore a key question to ecology, albeit one that has been afforded less consideration in the context of movement ecology [117]. In lakes, productivity scales with the perimeter/area ratio, suggesting that small lakes, rather than great lakes or seas, would be ideal venues for investigating habitat coupling and ecological roles with replicated whole lake experiments including manipulations of the fish assemblage and experimental alterations of lake productivity [257,307].…”

Factors determining parasite abundance in European perch, Perca fluviatilis, European whitefish, Coregonus lavaretus, and Arctic charr, Salvelinus alpinus, in an oligotrophic lake, southern Norway

“…As these are benthic animals, the high occurrence of acanthocephalans in perch indicates a littoral diet. Perch has a high dependence on the littoral zone (Zamora & Moreno-Amich 2002;Jacobsen et al 2015), and it prefers the littoral zone during spring and summer according to a telemetric study (Westrelin et al 2018).…”