Do shorebirds graze down zoobenthic biomass at the Banc d'Arguin tidal flats in Mauritania?     

Wim J. Wolff  Hermann Michaelis 《Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science》2008,79(3):491-495

The 500 km² of tidal flats at the Banc d'Arguin, Mauritania, are a wintering site for over 2 million shorebirds, making this one of the areas with the highest density of shorebirds in the world. In earlier studies, it was found that these huge numbers of birds are dependent on a rather low biomass of benthic animals. To explain this paradoxical situation, we hypothesized that the earlier assessments of biomass in late winter and early spring do not reflect a year-round situation. Benthic biomass may be high when the birds arrive in autumn to be subsequently grazed down in the course of winter. To test this hypothesis, we have determined benthic biomass in September 1988. The result has been compared with a biomass value obtained in February–April 1986 with the same methods and at the same stations. These two biomass values do not differ significantly; so our hypothesis has to be rejected. It has to be admitted, however, that our experimental design cannot discern between differences due to the year of sampling and those due to the season.  相似文献   

Laboratory evidence for behavioural impairment of fish escaping trawls: a review   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Ryer  Clifford H. 《ICES Journal of Marine Science》2004,61(7):1157-1164

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Loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta (Linnaeus) preying on the invading gastropod Rapana venosa (Valenciennes) in the Río de la Plata Estuary     

Alvar Carranza  Andrés Estrades  Fabrizio Scarabino  Angel Segura 《Marine Ecology》2011,32(2):142-147

Here we report the first observations of loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta preying on a conspicuous molluscan invader, the rapa whelk Rapana venosa. An average number of 136 opercula were found in stomach contents of five turtles, the curved carapace length ranging in from 51 to 112 cm. No other alimentary items were found in the turtles analyzed. We suggest that the rapa whelk may constitute up to 100% of the diet for immature and mature loggerheads in the Río de la Plata estuary (Uruguay), highlighting the plastic nature of the foraging behavior of loggerheads.  相似文献   

Small is profitable: No support for the optimal foraging theory in sea stars Asterias rubens foraging on the blue edible mussel Mytilus edulis   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Christiaan Hummel  Pieter HonkoopJaap van der Meer 《Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science》2011,94(1):89-92

Doubt has been shed recently on the most popular optimal foraging theory stating that predators should maximize prey profitability, i.e., select that prey item that contains the highest energy content per handling time. We hypothesized that sea stars do not forage on blue mussels according to the classical optimal foraging theory but are actively avoiding damage that may be caused by e.g. capture of foraging on too-strong mussel shells, hence the sea stars will have a stronger preference for mussels that are smaller than the most profitable ones. Here we present experimental evidence of the sea star Asterias rubens as a predator that indeed chooses much smaller blue mussels Mytilus edulis to forage on than the most profitable ones. Hence this study does not support the optimal foraging theory. There may be other constraints involved in foraging than just optimizing energy intake, for example predators may also be concerned with preventing potential loss or damage of their foraging instruments.  相似文献   

Effects of wild fish and motile epibenthic invertebrates on the benthos below an open water fish farm     

Carlos Sanz-Lázaro  María Dolores BelandoFrancisco Navarrete-Mier  Arnaldo Marín 《Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science》2011

A manipulative caging experiment was carried out to evaluate the role of wild fish and motile epibenthic invertebrates on the benthic system influenced by an open water fish farm. Chemical and biological parameters of the sediment were measured as indicators of the ecological benthic status. The combination of wild fish and currents notably lowered aquaculture waste sedimentation below the fish farm. The limited waste sedimentation rate could have limited the scavenger and predation activity of wild fish on the benthos, whose role may be taken over by motile epibenthic invertebrates. The interaction of these motile epibenthic invertebrates with the sediment differed from that observed with fish. The motile epibenthic invertebrates led to more reduced conditions with lower redox values, significantly decreased the number of species of macrofaunal benthic assemblages and significantly modified macrofaunal benthic assemblages. Therefore, epibenthic invertebrates do not seem to have an ameliorative effect on the benthic status produced by fish farming. Since the effects of epibenthic species on the benthic system can greatly vary according to their identity, further experiments should be performed to better understand the drivers that influence the epibenthic species identity that modulate the benthic system affected by fish farming.  相似文献   

Are all patterns created equal? Cooperation is more likely in spatially simple habitats     

Camilla Bertolini  Kasper Hlebowicz  Flavia Schlichta  Jacob J. Capelle  Johan van de Koppel  Tjeerd.J. Bouma 《Marine Ecology》2019,40(6)

Cooperative behaviours, such as aggregation with neighbouring conspecifics, can enhance resilience in habitats where risks (i.e. predation, physical disturbances) are high, exerting positive feedback loops to maintain a healthy population. At the same time, cooperation behaviours can involve some extra energy expenditures and increasing resource competition. For sessile reefs, like mussels, simulation models predict increased cooperation under increasing levels of environmental stress. Predation risk is viewed as a behaviour‐modifying stressor, but its role on cooperation mechanisms, such as likelihood of reciprocity, has not yet been empirically tested. This study harnesses this framework to understand how cooperation changes under different perceived levels of predation risk, using mussel beds as model of a complex “self‐organised” system. Hence, we assessed the context dependency of cooperation response in different “landscapes of fear,” created by changes in predator cues, substratum availability and body size. Our experiments demonstrated that i) cooperation in a mussel bed system increases when predator cues are present, but that this relationship was found to be both, ii) strongly context‐dependent, particularly upon substratum availability and iii) size‐dependent. That is, while cooperation is in general greater for larger individuals, the response to risk results in greater cooperation when alternative attachment substratum is absent, meaning that simpler landscapes may be perceived as riskier. The context dependency of structural complexity is also an essential finding to consider in a changing world where habitats are losing complexity and cooperative strategies should be maximised.  相似文献   

白色霞水母(Cyanea nozakii)摄食行为与消化时间研究     

王朋鹏  张芳  孙松 《海洋与湖沼》2019,50(4):864-875

近年来白色霞水母(Cyaneanozakii)在我国近海出现数量波动,在其暴发年份严重影响了暴发区域的社会、经济和生态。本文通过观察不同饵料密度下白色霞水母触手丝的长度变化、游动状态来研究其摄食行为,同时对白色霞水母消化时间进行研究,结果表明:饵料密度较低时,霞水母触手丝完全伸展;密度过量时(500ind./L),周围饵料较充足,触手丝处于收缩状态;饵料密度对霞水母游动状态无显著影响,表明霞水母在水体中通过不断调整触手丝伸长与收缩来对周围饵料进行感知,达到一种高效的摄食状态,而非调整其游动状态。饵料种类、大小对霞水母消化时间具有显著影响:温度为18.5°C环境下,胶质类生物(水螅水母和海月水母碟状体)在霞水母胃中平均存留时间为(0.8±0.2)h,平均比大小无差异的桡足类短2.3h,比鱼类短3.7h,相比而言,胶质类生物较易消化,鱼类最难消化;随桡足类、海月水母、鱼类的体长增加,霞水母对其消化时间显著增长;随着霞水母伞径增大(2.2—14.5cm),以卤虫为饵料消化时间呈显著线性下降,以桡足类为饵料消化时间无显著差异,表明霞水母伞径大小对消化时间的影响因饵料种类不同而有差异。本文的研究结果为野外环境中定性与定量研究霞水母摄食率提供基础。  相似文献   

Dietary niche partitioning in a piscivorous fish guild in response to stocking of an additional competitor - The role of diet specialisation     

Torsten Schulze  Hendrik Dörner  Uli BaadeFranz Hölker 《Limnologica》2012,42(1):56-64

Species belonging to the same ecological guild can coexist only if there are differences in their responses to limiting resources. Thus, competitor introductions may modify the niches of the resident competitors, but empirical studies are rare. The extent of niche modification might further depend on the species’ trophic specialisation along the specialists-to-generalists axis. In this study, we performed a semi-natural experiment by introducing a trophically specialised piscivorous fish (pikeperch) to the resident predator guild of a trophic generalist (perch) and a trophic specialist (pike) in a temperate freshwater lake. Individual diet data were used to calculate total niche hypervolume and inter- and intraspecific dietary niche overlap to evaluate strength of competitive interactions before and after pikeperch introduction. In both pike and perch, there was a moderate niche compression in response to pikeperch stocking. Furthermore, whereas perch diet hypervolume did not overlap at all with that of pikeperch, the intersection of niche space between the two trophic specialists was highly asymmetrical in favour of pike due to its less specialised diet composition in comparison with pikeperch. The intraspecific dietary niche overlap between perch size classes reflected an enhanced partitioning, whereas that of pike size classes was found almost unchanged in response to pikeperch stocking. These empirical results corroborate that competitive interactions and the degree of specialisation may strongly shape the success of introductions of top-predators in freshwater ecosystems. The most specialised species may persist only if the competitors belong rather to the generalists along the specialisation continuum.  相似文献   

Downstream movement of fry of galaxias fasciatus gray (note)     

J‐P. Ots  G. A. Eldon 《新西兰海洋与淡水研究杂志》2013,47(1):97-99

The fry of Galaxias fasciatus Gray were recorded for the first time, being carried downstream on a flood. Attempts to rear the fry in tanks in fresh and in salt water were unsuccessful, but those kept in salt water began to feed and survived for several weeks.  相似文献   

Food web and fish stock changes in central Chile: comparing the roles of jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) predation,the environment,and fisheries     

《Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography》2013

We analyzed recent food web and fish stock changes in the central Chile marine ecosystem, comparing the roles of jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) as predator, the environment, and fishing. To accomplish this we used food web modeling and the Ecopath with Ecosim software (EwE). The principal fish stocks have experienced wide decadal fluctuations in the past 30 years, including stock collapses of horse mackerel (Trachurus murphyi) and hake (Merluccius gayi), and there was a large influx of jumbo squid during the mid-2000s. We used two EwE models representing the food web off central Chile to test the hypothesis that predation by jumbo squid has been significant in explaining the dynamics of the main fishing resources and other species in the study area. Results indicate that predation by jumbo squid on fish stocks is lower than that of other predators (e.g. hake) and the fishery. Long-term fluctuations (1978–2004) in the biomass of the main fish stocks (as well as other components of the food web) seem to be related to fishing and to variation in primary production, rather than to predation by jumbo squid alone. Jumbo squid seems to play a role as predator rather than prey in the system, but its impacts are low when compared with the impacts of other predators and fishing. Therefore, we conclude that jumbo squid predation on its prey was not the primary force behind the collapse of important fish stocks off central Chile. Future efforts should be directed to better understanding factors that trigger sudden increases in jumbo squid abundance off central Chile, as well as modeling its trophic impacts.  相似文献