Abstract
Aquatic macroinvertebrates play an important functional role in energy transfer in food webs, linking basal food sources to upper trophic levels that include fish, birds, and humans. However, the trophic coupling of nutritional quality between macroinvertebrates and their food sources is still poorly understood. We conducted a field study in subalpine streams in Austria to investigate how the nutritional quality (measured by long‐chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, LC‐PUFAs) in macroinvertebrates changes relative to their basal food sources. Samples of macroinvertebrates, periphyton, and leaves were collected from 17 streams in July and October 2016 and their fatty acid (FA) composition was analyzed. Periphyton FA varied strongly with time and space, and their trophic effect on macroinvertebrate FA differed among functional feeding groups. The match between periphyton FA and macroinvertebrate FA decreased with increasing trophic levels, but LC‐PUFA content increased with each trophic step from periphyton to grazers and finally predators. Macroinvertebrates fed selectively on, assimilated, and/or actively controlled their LC‐PUFA, especially eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20 : 5ω3) relative to their basal food sources in the face of spatial and temporal changes. Grazer FA profiles reflected periphyton FA with relatively good fidelity, and especially their EPA feeding strategy was primarily linked to periphyton FA variation across seasons. In contrast, shredders appeared to preferentially assimilate more EPA over other FA, which was determined by the availability of high‐quality food over seasons. Predators may more actively control their LC‐PUFA distribution with respect to different quality foods and showed less fidelity to the basal FA profiles in plants and prey. Overall, grazers and shredders showed relatively good fidelity to food FA profiles and performed as both “collectors” and “integrators” for LC‐PUFA requirements across seasons, while predators at higher trophic levels were more “integrators” with added metabolic complexity leading to somewhat more divergent FA profiles. These results are potentially applicable for other aquatic consumers in freshwater and marine ecosystems.
Highlights
Aquatic macroinvertebrates play an important functional role in energy transfer in food webs, linking basal food sources to upper trophic levels that include fish, birds, and humans
Differences in fatty acid (FA) compositions among macroinvertebrates and basal food sources Systematic differences between terrestrial and aquatic FA were observed in the principal component analysis (PCA) (Fig. 1)
Submerged leaves: for grazers, 2 0.28, p 5 0.36; shredders, 2 0.37, p 5 0.29; and filterers, 2 0.39, p 5 0.24). These results suggested that macroinvertebrate primary consumers were not very efficient at converting EPA from dietary ALA, and they must directly obtain EPA from diet sources; (2) results of PCA and analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) showed that macroinvertebrate FA was dissimilar to leaf FA but more similar to periphyton FA; EPA% was considerably high in periphyton and macroinvertebrates, and very low in submerged leaves and absent in fresh leaves; (3) compared with other FA, EPA is critical for the somatic growth and reproduction of stream macroinvertebrates (Stanley-Samuelson 1994; Guo et al 2016b)
Summary
Aquatic macroinvertebrates play an important functional role in energy transfer in food webs, linking basal food sources to upper trophic levels that include fish, birds, and humans. Grazers and shredders showed relatively good fidelity to food FA profiles and performed as both “collectors” and “integrators” for LC-PUFA requirements across seasons, while predators at higher trophic levels were more “integrators” with added metabolic complexity leading to somewhat more divergent FA profiles These results are potentially applicable for other aquatic consumers in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Aquatic macroinvertebrates play an important role in trophic transfer within and across ecosystems, linking energy flow from basal food sources to upper trophic levels such as fish and eventually humans (Allan and Castillo 2007), and Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article Such impacts to basal food sources can affect the nutritional quality of macroinvertebrates and have important consequences for higher trophic levels
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