Simplified food webs lead to energetic bottlenecks in polluted lakes

Abstract

Very little is known about the consequence of human activities on the flow of energy through natural ecosystems. Here, we present a trophic-based approach to describing energy relationships in pollutant-disturbed lakes, emphasizing the importance of prey diversity in maintaining energy transfer to growing fish. Both diet and community analysis indicated that the food web leading to yellow perch (Perca flavescens) in metal-polluted lakes was extremely simplified compared with reference lakes. Through the application of an in situ marker for fish activity costs (muscle lactate dehydrogenase activity) and through bioenergetic modelling, we show how this has severe consequences on the efficiency of energy transfer to perch from their prey; premature energetic bottlenecks (zero conversion efficiency) occur when successively larger prey types are not available to growing perch. These observations provide a much needed ecological and physiological framework for assessing how energy transfer can be affected in polluted systems. Our approach need not be limited therein but should be applicable to any aquatic system where food web structure is variable and (or) disrupted.