4.5 Article

Longitudinal pattern of resource utilization by aquatic consumers along a disturbed subtropical urban river: Estimating the relative contribution of resources with stable isotope analysis

Journal

ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 11, Issue 23, Pages 16763-16775

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8304

Keywords

carbon source; diet assimilation; food web; MixSIAR; periphyton; submerged hydrophyte

Funding

  1. National Natural Science Foundation of China [51909107]
  2. Natural Science Foundation of Hainan Province [421QN195, 421QN196]
  3. Hainan University Start-up Funding for Scientific Research [KYQD[ZR]-21015, KYQD[ZR]-21033]
  4. Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS [QYZDB-SSW-SMC041]
  5. Project of Gehu Lake Fisheries Administration Committee Office of Jiangsu Province [2021-0039]
  6. China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2019M653284]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

The utilization of food resources by aquatic consumers in the Liuxi River is mainly dependent on diatom-dominated periphyton, aquatic C-3 plants, and suspended particulate organic matter, highlighting the importance of inherent producers in river ecosystems. The study suggests that protecting these producers and restoring their habitats are crucial for effective aquatic ecosystem management.
The utilization of food resources by aquatic consumers reflects the structure and functioning of river food webs. In lotic water systems, where food availability and predator-prey relationships vary with gradient changes in physical conditions, understanding diet assimilation by local communities is important for ecosystem conservation. In the subtropical Liuxi River, southern China, the relative contribution of basal resources to the diet assimilation of functional feeding groups (FFGs) was determined by stable carbon (C-13) and nitrogen (N-15) isotope analyses. The output of Bayesian mixing models showed that diatom-dominated periphyton (epilithic biofilm), aquatic C-3 plants (submerged hydrophytes), and suspended particulate organic matter (SPOM) associated with terrestrial C-3 plants contributed the most to the diet assimilation of FFGs in the upper, middle, and lower reaches, respectively. The relative contribution of consumer diet assimilation was weighted by the biomass (wet weight, g/m(2)) of each FFG to reflect resource utilization at the assemblage level. From the upper to the lower reaches, the spatial variation in the diet assimilation of fish and invertebrate assemblages could be summarized as a longitudinal decrease in periphyton (from 57%-76% to <3%) and an increase in SPOM (from <7% to 51%-68%) with a notable midstream increase in aquatic C-3 plants (23%-48%). These results indicate that instream consumers in the Liuxi River rely more on autochthonous production (e.g., periphyton and submerged hydrophytes) than on terrestrially derived allochthonous matter (e.g., terrestrial plants). The pattern of resource utilization by consumers in the mid-upper Liuxi River is consistent with findings from other open subtropical and neotropical rivers and provides evidence for the riverine productivity model. Our study indicates that protecting inherent producers in rivers (e.g., periphyton and submerged hydrophytes) and restoring their associated habitats (e.g., riffles with cobble substrate) are conducive to aquatic ecosystem management.

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