Habitat structural complexity increases age-class coexistence and productivity in fish populations

Abstract

Structurally-complex habitats harbour more taxonomically-diverse and more productive communities, a phenomenon generally ascribed to habitat complexity relaxing the strength of inter-specific predation and competition. Here, we extend this classical, community-centred view by showing that positive complexity-diversity and complexity-productivity relationships may also emerge from between-age-class, intra-specific interactions at a single-population level. In the laboratory, we show that medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) are strongly cannibalistic in complexity-free habitats, and that cannibalism may occur over a wide range of victim/cannibal body size ratios. In replicated outdoor pond populations, we manipulated habitat structural complexity using floating artificial structures, which selectively hampered movements of large-bodied medaka. Habitat complexity relaxed the strength of cannibalism, resulting in (1) increased survival of age-0+ individuals, (2) elevated age-class diversity, (3) increased population growth rate, and (4) dampened negative density-dependence in the stock-recruitment relationship reflecting elevated habitat carrying capacity. The resultant higher population density in complex habitats was associated with increased competition for food among both age-0+ and age-1+ individuals. Our results highlight that positive complexity-diversity and complexity-productivity relationships may be considered as a generally-emergent property of size-structured populations and communities in which a larger body size brings a predation or interference advantage. Hence, enhancement of habitat structural complexity may be seen as a pivotal management strategy not only in favour of taxonomic diversity, but also to increase the productivity and resilience of exploited populations and to improve the conservation status of endangered species.