Diet and Growth of Northern Pike in the Absence of Prey Fishes: Initial Consequences for Persisting in Disturbance‐Prone Lakes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The northern pike Esox lucius is a renowned piscivore, but will prey opportunistically on invertebrates (e.g., in small lakes of boreal Alberta, where winterkill can unexpectedly reduce or eliminate prey fishes). We emulated such a disturbance by stocking a fishless lake with northern pike and then monitored their diet and growth over two summers. Stomach content analysis revealed that stocked adults responded to the sudden absence of prey fishes by specializing on energy‐rich leeches (families Glossiphoniidae and Erpobdellidae), whereas juvenile offspring consumed a broader mix of invertebrates. Stable isotope analysis supported these results and indicated a relatively rapid drop in the trophic position of stocked adults. Compared with growth of northern pike in regional lakes containing prey fishes, growth of adults in the experimental lake was apparently compromised by a diet of invertebrates but growth of juveniles was high. Although long‐term dynamics of northern pike in these disturbance‐prone lakes are undocumented, our results suggest that northern pike are capable of adapting rapidly to the absence of prey fishes; however, such a diet imposes a trophic bottleneck that can lead to stunting.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".