Dietary shifts in the crystal darter (Crystallaria asprella) after large‐scale river fragmentation

Abstract

Abstract – The crystal darter, Crystallaria asprella (Jordan), is a benthic, riverine specialist, rare throughout its range and critically imperiled in the state of Mississippi. Construction of the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway has fragmented a once continuous population of this species into several subpopulations in remaining, free‐flowing tributaries of the system. In spite of this fragmentation and population subdivision, we collected numerous individuals from the waterway during summer 2004 and 2005. Because of the lentic conditions in the waterway, we questioned whether a dietary shift accompanied darters occupying this new environment. We also obtained museum specimens from the Tombigbee River before waterway construction and quantified and compared diets among the historical, tributary (contemporary) and waterway specimens. We hypothesised that waterway specimens would differ significantly in diet from both historical and tributary specimens, and that the latter two groups would have similar diets. Multiresponse permutation procedures indicated that all three groups were significantly different from each other and indicator species analysis identified significant indicator taxa for waterway and tributary specimens. Using a null model approach, dietary overlap was significantly greater than expected for tributary and waterway specimens, and significantly less than expected for waterway and historical specimens. Dietary plasticity was evident for crystal darters across space and time, but it remains unknown whether waterway individuals represent a population sink or are actively dispersing from nearby population sources.