Larger body size with higher predation rate

Abstract

Abstract – Many studies have reported that prey fish increase in body size with an increase in piscivore abundance, and this change may be explained mainly by two processes: release from intraspecific competition because of a reduction in the prey fish population and size‐dependent selection by the piscivore. However, the evolutionary mechanism is not yet fully understood. Here, we first show the body‐size dynamics of the semelparous gobiid fish Gymnogobius isaza, which is one of the prey fishes of the introduced largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides. The data show the possibility that the goby body size might have changed in parallel to the number of largemouth bass from 1975 to 2002, which may be one of the best examples of the positive relationship between body size and predation rate. Furthermore, we explored a mathematical model to consider a body‐size change of semelparous fish from an evolutionary viewpoint. The model provided the following qualitative predictions: (1) the optimal assimilation rate increases with predation pressure; (2) a rapid large‐scale increase in predation pressure may exterminate the prey fish because of delayed evolution of the assimilation rate; and (3) the optimal assimilation rate increases when the prey fish is more likely to die through predation than through natural mortality or when it is difficult to grow larger because of low resource availability or insufficient foraging efficiency. Moreover, we propose a theoretical framework to evaluate the relative effects of ecological and evolutionary processes over the long term.