Abstract
Ecological opportunity occurs when a resource becomes available through a decrease of interspecific competition and another species colonizes the vacant niche through phenotypic plasticity and intraspecific competition. Brook charr exhibit a resource polymorphism in some Canadian Shield lakes, where a littoral ecotype feeds mainly on zoobenthos and a pelagic ecotype feeds mostly on zooplankton. The objectives of this study were to test that (i) resource polymorphism is common in these brook charr populations, (ii) the presence creek chub and white sucker, two introduced species competing with brook charr for littoral resources, will decrease the phenotypic divergence between the two brook charr ecotypes, and (iii) the ecological release from introduced species will increase population and/or individual niche widths in brook charr. The study was based on 27 lakes and five indicators of resource use (stomach content, liver δ13C, muscle astaxanthin concentration, pyloric caecum length, and gill raker length). Our results indicate that within-lake differences in resource use by both ecotypes are common and stable through time. When facing interspecific competition, both littoral and pelagic brook charr incorporated more pelagic prey into their diet but maintained the amplitude of their differences in resource use, which contradicts our second prediction. Finally, we did not find any significant effect of introduced species on population and individual niche widths of brook charr. We suggest that the difference in feeding mode among distantly related competitors could prevent the complete exclusion of a species from a given niche and explain the lack of response to the ecological release.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the numerous students and research assistants involved in this project for their invaluable field and laboratory assistance: Dominic Bélanger, Ariane Bisson, Patricia Bolduc, Pierre-André Bordeleau, Olivier Chouinard, Alexandre East, Chantal Fournier, Natalie Godbout, Winna Landry, Benjamin Laramée, Roger Levasseur, Maya Petit, Stéphanie Plourde, Pierre Rigalleau, Timothée Rivault-Guillard, and David Schelling. Luc Farly and Dany Bouchard provided technical advice for stable isotope analyses. We also thank Olivier Roy and David Schelling from Mastigouche and St. Maurice Wildlife Reserve as well as Michel Plante from La Mauricie National Park for their logistic assistance. Laure Devine, the Handling Editor (Craig Layman), David Coté, and two anonymous referees provided helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.
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This work was supported by Grants from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Research Chair Program to P.M. V.R. was supported by a scholarship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies (FRQNT) du Québec.
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PM originally formulated the idea. VR, MP, IL, and AF conducted fieldwork. VR, IL, and AF conducted laboratory analyses. VR wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors were involved in data analyses, contributed critically to the drafts, and gave final approval for publication.
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All applicable institutional or national guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. This protocol was approved by the Animal Care Committee at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (permits #MAU-2012-1593, 2013-05-15-046-04-S-P, and 2014-04-29-031-04-S-P).
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Rainville, V., Filion, A., Lussier, I. et al. Does ecological release from distantly related species affect phenotypic divergence in brook charr?. Oecologia 195, 77–92 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04822-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04822-6