Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Abstract
Fish predation can have structuring effects in aquatic communities, but the most important fish predators are not always immediately obvious. Generalist fish predators often occupy similar habitats and consume similar prey making determination of their consumptive impacts difficult. Understanding these consumptive impacts is important for understanding complex wetland food webs. I collected warmouth (Lepomis gulosus), bluespotted sunfish (Enneacanthus gloriosus), and dollar sunfish (Lepomis marginatus) in two seasons from sloughs for both diet and bioenergetics analysis. Macroinvertebrates dominated diets of the three species, and nonparametric analyses revealed evidence of diet ontogeny in warmouth and potential competition for prey items among gape-matched individuals. Bioenergetics modeling revealed high levels of macroinvertebrate comsumption by these species relative to macroinvertebrate reproductive output suggesting that when combined with other sources of mortality, consumptive pressures placed by sunfish on benthic macroinvertebrates may be quite large.
Extent
ix, 82 p. : ill.
Recommended Citation
Bransky, Jacob., "Diet variation and the consumptive effects of native centrarchids on benthic macroinvertebrates in wetlands" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019. 498.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_6/498
Identifier
FADT3356894
Comments
by Jacob Bransky.|Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012.|Includes bibliography.|Mode of access: World Wide Web.|System requirements: Adobe Reader.|by Jacob Bransky.