Abstract
The early life stages of Boreogadus saida and Arctogadus glacialis are morphologically similar, making it difficult to assess differences in their ecological niche. The present study documented for the first time the early life stage ecology of A. glacialis, compared it to that of B. saida, and identified the factors separating the niches of the two sympatric species. The 10,565 larval gadids collected in the Beaufort Sea from April to August of 2004 and 2008 were identified to species either directly by genetics and/or otolith nucleus size, or indirectly with a redistribution procedure. Between 8.0 and 8.7 % of all gadids were assigned to A. glacialis. Larvae of A. glacialis were longer at hatch and experienced lower mortality rates than those of B. saida. The two species shared similar spatiotemporal and vertical distributions, hatching season, and growth rate. Under the ice, feeding incidence of B. saida was low (14 %) relative to A. glacialis (88 %). At lengths <15 mm, both species specialized on different prey. The diet of fish >15 mm overlapped (Schoener’s index = 0.7), with Calanus glacialis and C. hyperboreus providing >50 % of the carbon intake of both species. The higher mortality in B. saida may be explained by the smaller size at age from hatching to metamorphosis and a lower under-ice feeding incidence. The early larval stage appears to be the key period of niche divergence between the two species.
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Acknowledgments
Sampling in 2004 was part of the Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study (CASES) funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Sampling in 2008 was part of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead Study (CFL) funded by the Canadian International Polar Year and NSERC. Thanks to the officers and crew of the CCGS icebreaker Amundsen for their diligence at sea. H. Cloutier extracted and analysed the otoliths. P. Lafrance conducted preliminary analyses on CASES data. C.B. received financial support from the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la nature et la technologie (FQRNT) and the Northern Scientific Training Program (NSTP) of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. This is a contribution to Québec-Océan at Université Laval, ArcticNet, and the Canada Research Chair on the response of arctic marine ecosystems to climate warming.
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This article belongs to the special issue on the “Ecology of Arctic Gadids”, coordinated by Franz Mueter, Jasmine Nahrgang, John Nelson, and Jørgen Berge.
An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00300-016-2054-3.
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Bouchard, C., Mollard, S., Suzuki, K. et al. Contrasting the early life histories of sympatric Arctic gadids Boreogadus saida and Arctogadus glacialis in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. Polar Biol 39, 1005–1022 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-014-1617-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-014-1617-4