Abstract
Threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) diet in El Rosario River estuary, its southernmost North American locality
Highlights
The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus Linnaeus, 1758, stickleback) is distributed across the boreal and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, inhabiting coastal marine waters, estuarine waters and an ample variety of freshwater habitats (Bell & Foster, 1994)
The stomach content analysis conducted on 159 sticklebacks, ranging from 29 to 46 mm standard length (SL), and allowed the identification of 14 major prey categories (Table 1)
Chironomid larvae dominated the diet in terms of %index of relative importance (IRI) (84.7%), with very little contribution from the other prey categories (> 4% each)
Summary
The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus Linnaeus, 1758, stickleback) is distributed across the boreal and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, inhabiting coastal marine waters, estuarine waters and an ample variety of freshwater habitats (Bell & Foster, 1994). In North America, this fish ranges from the Bering Strait, Alaska (Eigenmann, 1892), to El Rosario River, Baja California, Mexico (Ruiz-Campos et al, 2014; Fig. 1). The stickleback has declined in both abundance and distribution range in northwestern Baja California due to the progres-. Studies on the diet of the stickleback in different regions of its Holarctic distribution indicate that it feeds mainly on aquatic invertebrates, especially chironomid larvae, copepods, cladocerans and ostracods The feeding ecology of this species is well documented in many localities in both
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