Top-down control of invertebrates by Ninespine Stickleback in Arctic ponds

Abstract

Despite their widespread presence in northern-latitude ecosystems, the ecological role of Ninespine Stickleback Pungitius pungitius is not well understood. Ninespine Stickleback can occupy both top and intermediate trophic levels in freshwater ecosystems, so their role in food webs as a predator on invertebrates and as a forage fish for upper level consumers probably is substantial. We introduced Ninespine Sticklebacks to fishless ponds to elucidate their potential effects as a predator on invertebrate communities in Arctic lentic freshwaters. We hypothesized that Ninespine Stickleback would affect freshwater invertebrate communities in a top-down manner. We predicted that the addition of Ninespine Sticklebacks to fishless ponds would: 1) reduce invertebrate taxonomic richness, 2) decrease overall invertebrate abundance, 3) reduce invertebrate biomass, and 4) decrease average invertebrate body size. We tested our hypothesis at 2 locations by adding Ninespine Stickleback to isolated ponds and compared invertebrate communities over time between fish-addition and fishless control ponds. Ninespine Sticklebacks exerted strong top-down pressure on invertebrate communities mainly by changing invertebrate taxonomic richness and biomass and, to a lesser extent, abundance and average invertebrate size. Our results supported the hypothesis that Ninespine Stickleback may help shape lentic food webs in the Arctic.

Generalist feeding strategies in Arctic freshwater fish: A mechanism for dealing with extreme environments

“…Utqiaġvik (Cameron, Kostoris, & Penhale), and additional benthic macroinvertebrates, Ephemeroptera and Trichoptera, in a small beaded stream (McFarland et al, 2017). Ninespine stickleback track prey according to availability and shift their diets as necessary to maintain foraging (Delbeek & Williams, 1988;Laske, Rosenberger, Kane, Wipfli, & Zimmerman, 2017). These fish were found to mediate energy transfer from littoral habitats up the food chain to fish predators (Gallagher & Dick, 2011), providing another pathway for littoral benthic carbon to reach upper level consumers.…”

Ice roads through lake-rich Arctic watersheds: Integrating climate uncertainty and freshwater habitat responses into adaptive management

“…Species richness increases greatly with lake depth and connections to other water bodies, yet even bedfast-ice lakes can provide important summer foraging habitats (Haynes et al 2014a;Heim et al 2018). Although shallow waters freeze solid through the winter, if connected to stream systems or rivers during breakup flooding they readily become recolonized during the openwater season by fish, such as ninespine stickleback ( Figure 7D), to take advantage of high productivity from abundant large-bodied zooplankton, such as Daphnia middendorffiana ( Figure 7C; Laske et al 2017;Beaver et al in review). If connectivity to stream systems permits, productive bedfast-ice lakes also provide important foraging opportunities for piscivorous fishes, such as arctic grayling (Thymallus arcticus; Heim et al 2018).…”

“…In Arctic landscapes dominated by lakes, connectivity among freshwater habitats is highly predictive of fish species presence (Haynes et al 2014a) and diversity (Hershey et al 1999;Lesack and Marsh 2010;Laske et al 2017). A wide range of other ecosystem attributes (i.e., productivity and water chemistry) also corresponds to the degree to which lakes are linked by surface flows to other aquatic systems in the Arctic (Lesack and Marsh 2010) and other regions (e.g., Jones 2010), making connectivity an essential attribute to consider for watershedor landscape-scale management of freshwater habitat.…”

Lateral hydrological connectivity differentially affects the community characteristics of multiple groups of aquatic invertebrates in tropical wetland pans in South Africa

“…Since visually hunting fish species predominantly predate on larger individuals and species (Drenner, Dodson, Drenner, & Pinder Iii, 2009;Laske, Rosenberger, Kane, Wipfli, & Zimmerman, 2017;Wellborn, Skelly, & Werner, 1996), fish predation often drives a shift to smaller taxa and can lead to reduced average body sizes within the invertebrate community. Indeed, our results show a positive association between fish presence with size at maturity for macroinvertebrates.…”