Diet is correlated with otolith shape in marine fish

Type Article
Date 2016-08
Language English
Author(s) Mille Tiphaine1, Mahe KeligORCID1, Cachera Marie2, Villanueva Ching-MariaORCID3, de Pontual HeleneORCID3, Ernande BrunoORCID1
Affiliation(s) 1 : IFREMER, Ctr Manche Mer Nord, Lab Ressources Halieut, BP 699, F-62321 Boulogne Sur Mer, France.
2 : Inst Univ Europeen Mer, UMR 6539, Lab Sci Environm Marin, F-29280 Plouzane, France.
3 : IFREMER, Ctr Bretagne, Unite Sci & Technol Halieut, ZI Pointe Diable, CS10070, F-29280 Plouzane, France.
Source Marine Ecology Progress Series (0171-8630) (Inter-research), 2016-08 , Vol. 555 , P. 167-184
DOI 10.3354/meps11784
WOS© Times Cited 36
Keyword(s) Fourier analysis, English Channel, Interspecific, Morphometric analysis, Otolith growth, Saccular otolith, Stomach contents
Abstract Previous studies have shown that food amount influence fish otolith structure, opacity and shape and that diet composition has an effect on otolith chemical composition. This study investigated the potential correlation between diet and otolith shape in 5 wild marine fish species by addressing 4 complementary questions. First, is there a global relationship between diet and otolith shape? Second, which prey categories are involved in this relationship? Third, what are the respective contributions of food quantity and relative composition to diet–otolith shape co-variation? Fourth, is diet energetic composition related to otolith shape? For each species, we investigated how otolith shape varies with diet. These questions were tackled by describing diet in the analysis in 4 different ways, while also including individual-state variables to remove potential confounding effects. First, besides the strong effect of individual-state, a global relationship between diet and otolith shape was detected for 4 out of 5 fish species. Second, both main and secondary prey categories were related to variability in otolith shape. Otolith outline reconstructions revealed that both otolith global shape and its finer details co-varied with these prey categories. Third, the contribution of relative diet composition to diet–otolith shape co-variation was much higher than that of ingested food quantity. Fourth, the energetic composition of diet was related to otolith shape of only one species. These results suggest that diet in marine fish species may influence the quantity and composition of saccular endolymph proteins which play an important role in otolith biomineralization and their resulting 3D structure.
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