Altered feeding habits and strategies of a benthic forage fish () in chronically polluted tidal salt marshes

Daisuke Goto (1) , William G. Wallace (1, 2)

1 CUNY - City University of New York [New York]
2 Biology Department

Responses in feeding ecology of a benthic forage fish, mummichogs (), to altered prey resources were investigated in chronically polluted salt marshes (the Arthur Kill-AK, New York, USA). The diet niche breadth of the AK populations of mummichogs was significantly lower than that of the reference population, reflecting reduced benthic macroinfaunal species diversity. Most of the AK populations also had two to three times less food in their gut than the reference population. This disparity in gut fullness among the populations appeared to be partly due to ingested prey size shifts; some of the AK populations ingested fewer large prey than the reference population. Furthermore, benthic assemblages were strongly associated with sediment-associated mercury; gut fullness of the AK populations also significantly decreased with increasing mercury body burdens. These results indicate that chronic pollution may have directly (chemical bioaccumulation) and indirectly (reduced prey availability) altered the feeding ecology of mummichogs.

Mots clés: Trophic relationships; benthic environment; feeding strategy; pollution effects; diet analysis; salt marshes; the Hudson River

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Daisuke Goto, William G. Wallace. Altered feeding habits and strategies of a benthic forage fish () in chronically polluted tidal salt marshes. Marine Environmental Research, 2011, 72 (1-2), pp.75. ⟨10.1016/j.marenvres.2011.06.002⟩. ⟨hal-00720184⟩