Trophic plasticity of omnivorous fishes in natural and human-dominated landscapes

Abstract

The persistence of diverse communities and functioning ecosystems under increasing anthropogenic pressure relies on food web rewiring and the ability of animals to expand or change their diet in disturbed ecosystems. We combined a suite of diet tracing techniques to study trophic plasticity in omnivorous fishes, ecomorphologically similar species with high competition potential, across different human land uses in subtropical streams. We found that the proportion of native forest cover, associated with intensive land use, altered the isotopic composition of fishes, which were more enriched in 13C, without affecting the carbon isotope ratios of their prey and basal resources. There was also evidence for a nonlinear effect of native forest cover on the δ15N values of basal resources, macroinvertebrates, and omnivorous fishes, indicating that nutrient pollution from agriculture propagated through stream food webs. The most widely distributed fish species shifted their diet from autochthonous resources to terrestrial invertebrates and sedimentary organic matter in disturbed streams. Moreover, the isotopic niche of this fish species was broader in streams with higher fish species richness, indicating the combined impacts of environmental change and competition on species coexistence. Therefore, our findings showed that the dominance and trophic niche breadth of dominant omnivores depend not only on the availability of resources but also on the interactions with their putative competitors.