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. 2022 Jul 11;12(7):e9087.
doi: 10.1002/ece3.9087. eCollection 2022 Jul.

Can size distributions of European lake fish communities be predicted by trophic positions of their fish species?

Renee M van Dorst  1 , Christine Argillier  2 , Sandra Brucet  3   4 , Kerstin Holmgren  5 , Pietro Volta  6 , Ian J Winfield  7 , Thomas Mehner  1
Affiliations

Can size distributions of European lake fish communities be predicted by trophic positions of their fish species?

Renee M van Dorst et al. Ecol Evol. .

Abstract

An organism's body size plays an important role in ecological interactions such as predator-prey relationships. As predators are typically larger than their prey, this often leads to a strong positive relationship between body size and trophic position in aquatic ecosystems. The distribution of body sizes in a community can thus be an indicator of the strengths of predator-prey interactions. The aim of this study was to gain more insight into the relationship between fish body size distribution and trophic position in a wide range of European lakes. We used quantile regression to examine the relationship between fish species' trophic position and their log-transformed maximum body mass for 48 fish species found in 235 European lakes. Subsequently, we examined whether the slopes of the continuous community size distributions, estimated by maximum likelihood, were predicted by trophic position, predator-prey mass ratio (PPMR), or abundance (number per unit effort) of fish communities in these lakes. We found a positive linear relationship between species' maximum body mass and average trophic position in fishes only for the 75% quantile, contrasting our expectation that species' trophic position systematically increases with maximum body mass for fish species in European lakes. Consequently, the size spectrum slope was not related to the average community trophic position, but there were negative effects of community PPMR and total fish abundance on the size spectrum slope. We conclude that predator-prey interactions likely do not contribute strongly to shaping community size distributions in these lakes.

Keywords: body size; community size spectrum; ecological interactions; fish; predator–prey interactions; trophic level.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Map showing the distribution of the 235 lakes included in the analyses of our study
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Relationship between trophic position and the maximum body mass (kg) according to FishBase. (a) 25%, 50%, and 75% quantile regression lines. Model output is shown in Table 2. (b) Separate linear regression lines for predators and prey. Solid lines are significant regressions, while dashed lines are not significant
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Marginal effect plots from the linear mixed model between the exponent b of the size spectrum and (a) the mean trophic position of a population (averaged over individuals), (b) the ratio of predator‐to‐prey body mass (log10(PPMR)), and (c) the catch per unit effort (log10(CPUE)). Model outputs are shown in Table 3. Black lines indicate significant relationships with 95% CI intervals, while the gray dotted line represents a non‐significant relationship. N = 235 lakes
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