Trout & the Fish Food Chain
If you are an angler that targets trout, especially to make a tasty dinner, you should consider yourself at the top of that fish's food chain. However, the ones that get away remain high up in this web.
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Significance
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The brook trout is one example of a trout species with a vital place in the food chain, notes the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. The young hatchlings are dependent on such things as leaves, twigs, sticks and organic animal remains making their way into the water. Once there, these items become food for aquatic insects, which in turn become a meal for the young trout.
Link in the Chain
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As trout grow over time, their appetites, size and hunting ability allows them to tackle larger aquatic prey, such as the crayfish and other fish species. The trout becomes food itself when predators including kingfishers, bears, great blue herons, bald eagles, ospreys, otters and humans capture and eat them.
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Effects
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Trout depend greatly upon the forests that surround many of the brooks, streams and rivers in which they live. Without the plant and animal matter filtering into and making its way down stream from these woodlands, the many creatures that trout wind up eating would not develop, ascertains the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Conditions such as drought and flood influence this fish food chain, and the trout.
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References
- Photo Credit trout image by michael langley from Fotolia.com
