Trophic analysis of the fish community in the Ciénega Churince, Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Ecology, Zoology
- Keywords
- Churince, Trophic analysis, Fish community, stomach contents, index of relative importance
- Copyright
- © 2016 Hernández et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Trophic analysis of the fish community in the Ciénega Churince, Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2154v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2154v1
Abstract
The fish community in the Churince system includes endemic, native and introduced species. Fish diets were analysed in order to evaluate the tropho-dynamics of the community. Nine sampling campaigns were carried out between February 2011 and May 2014, and 556 specimens of nine fish species were collected. Stomach contents were analysed using the Index of Relative Importance (IRI) and the Index of Absolute Importance (RIa). Similar groups were defined for the trophic chain using the average linkage method. Feeding strategies were stenophagic in only the species Herichthys minckleyi and euryphagic in the other eight species. The main food categories found in the stomach contents of the fish community were insects, crustaceans, gastropods, plants and teleosts. Four functional groups were defined for the trophic chain, with no top consumer fish species. Despite this, the fish were observed to be regulators, mainly of invertebrates. The chain reaction in the control of food was thus greater from the top to the bottom.
Author Comment
This paper is part of the results of the project "Total diversity of the Churince". Churince is one of the most important swamps within the Natural Protected Area of Cuatro Cienegas, in Coahuila, Mexico. The project's aims are to analyze the ichtyofauna that inhabits this particular ecosystem, as well as to understand the relationships of the fish with the ecosystem and among species. This paper was also presented as a poster in the 2013 Joint Meeting of The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Supplemental Information
Figure 1 Map
Mexico, showing the Ciénega Churince in Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila.
Figure 2 Image of study area
Map of the Churince system.
Figure 3
Trophic spectrum of the fish community.
Figure 4
Simpson’s similarity index for the G. marshi groups in Laguna Intermedia and in the freshwater spring Manantial de Agua Dulce.
Figure 5
Bray-Curtis similarity index for the species ingested, based on diet composition and expressed by the IRI.
Figure 6
Bray-Curtis index to rank species according to the similarity of the species in the diet.
Table 1
Collected species and their specimens, following the division of the Ciénega Churince.
Table 2
Summary of the trophic spectrum of the Ciénega Churince fish community. IRI: Index of Relative Importance, RIa: Index of Absolute Importance, Q: feeding coefficient. Food items in the diet are classified as primary , secondary and rare .