Goldfish, an exotic originally from Asia, are frequently released into North American waters, causing unknown impacts on native fauna and flora. In the wild, diet overlap between feral goldfish (Carassius auratus) and native red-spotted newts (Notophthalmus v. viridescens) is high, leading to potential interspecific competition over food. In the laboratory, we manipulated densities of goldfish and red-spotted newts to test competition for benthic food organisms between these unrelated species. / No intraspecific interference was noted for either goldfish or newts at any density. However, as density increased food resources were more rapidly depleted by both species, suggesting scramble competition. Foraging strategies of the species differed. Goldfish shoaled more and abandoned food patches before they were depleted, whereas newts were solitary and exhausted a food patch before moving on to new sites. Both species found more food patches when with heterospecifics than with conspecifics, suggesting interspecific information transfer. In addition, goldfish found more food patches than newts in all trials, indicating scramble competition occurred.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.56896 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Roy, Lucie H. |
| Contributors | Whoriskey, Frederick G. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Renewable Resources.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001324161, proquestno: AAIMM87587, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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