Oester Rebecca, Greenway Ryan, Moosmann Marvin, Sommaruga Ruben, Tartarotti Barbara, Brodersen Jakob, Matthews Blake
ETH Zürich, D-USYS Zürich Switzerland.
Department of Fish Ecology and Evolution Eawag Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Biogeochemistry Kastanienbaum Switzerland.
Ecol Evol. 2022 Apr 24;12(4):e8862. doi: 10.1002/ece3.8862. eCollection 2022 Apr.
Trait expression of natural populations often jointly depends on prevailing abiotic environmental conditions and predation risk. Copepods, for example, can vary their expression of compounds that confer protection against ultraviolet radiation (UVR), such as astaxanthin and mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs), in relation to predation risk. Despite ample evidence that copepods accumulate less astaxanthin in the presence of predators, little is known about how the community composition of planktivorous fish can affect the overall expression of photoprotective compounds. Here, we investigate how the (co-)occurrence of Arctic charr () and threespine stickleback () affects the photoprotective phenotype of the copepod in lake ecosystems in southern Greenland. We found that average astaxanthin and MAA contents were lowest in lakes with stickleback, but we found no evidence that these photoprotective compounds were affected by the presence of charr. Furthermore, variance in astaxanthin among individual copepods was greatest in the presence of stickleback and the astaxanthin content of copepods was negatively correlated with increasing stickleback density. Overall, we show that the presence and density of stickleback jointly affect the content of photoprotective compounds by copepods, illustrating how the community composition of predators in an ecosystem can determine the expression of prey traits that are also influenced by abiotic stressors.
自然种群的性状表达通常共同取决于主要的非生物环境条件和捕食风险。例如,桡足类动物可以根据捕食风险,改变其合成具有抗紫外线辐射(UVR)功能的化合物(如虾青素和类菌孢素氨基酸(MAAs))的表达。尽管有充分证据表明,在有捕食者的情况下桡足类动物积累的虾青素较少,但对于食浮游生物鱼类的群落组成如何影响光保护化合物的整体表达,人们却知之甚少。在这里,我们研究了北极红点鲑()和三刺鱼()的(共)出现如何影响格陵兰岛南部湖泊生态系统中桡足类动物的光保护表型。我们发现,在有三刺鱼的湖泊中,虾青素和MAA的平均含量最低,但我们没有发现这些光保护化合物受到红点鲑存在影响的证据。此外,在有三刺鱼的情况下,单个桡足类动物中虾青素的差异最大,并且桡足类动物的虾青素含量与三刺鱼密度的增加呈负相关。总体而言,我们表明三刺鱼的存在和密度共同影响桡足类动物光保护化合物的含量,这说明了生态系统中捕食者的群落组成如何能够决定猎物性状的表达,而这些性状也受到非生物应激源的影响。