Recently I read
an article regarding the negative impacts of invasive species in lake
ecosystems. Specifically, Vander sought deeper understanding of smallmouth and
rock bass’s effect on native trout species. The author hypothesized that
littoral fish prey abundance as well as diversity would be markedly lower in
affected systems. In addition Vander believed that Trout diet would shift away
from pelagic fish prey toward a more littoral diet. Data from this paper shows that
introduction of prey species into non-native lakes will have negative
ecological effect. It also, provides more incentive to the current angler to
use non-live bait in order to avoid these costly consequences on the natural
ecosystem.
The introduction
of non native species should be discontinued as well as the use of live bait by
anglers due to the potential strong top down effects that can occur as seen
with bass on trout. Normally littoral and pelagic dynamics are not intimately
associated, but the bass’s top-down effect, pressured the normally pelagic
predators to obtain their energy from the littoral habitat. This was clearly
demonstrated through Vanders clever use of isotopes to track energy flow within
a system and should be considered by fisheries. What do you guys think? Could
there be potential benefits to such an
introduction? If so, do you like Vanders use of isotope tracking as a means to
study food web dynamics? http://limnology.wisc.edu/personnel/jakevz/pdf/1999_Nature_VZetal.pdf
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