Quote:
Originally Posted by chubbdarter
I often relate the rmw decline to the grizzley bear.
The grizzley and the whole eco system is life dependant on the short salmon spawn.
Did the rmw rely as heavy on the Bull trout spawn? You see grizzley bears who are so full that they catch a salmon and rip its guts open if its a male salmon its sea gull food. If they catch a female salmon they eat only the eggs. Were bully eggs a ingrediant that played a key factor in rmw numbers?
We have a wierd tme period when bulls were near gone....rmw should of flourished....my simple mind says they needed each other.
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This is not likely to be the case.
Bull Trout are primarily piscivorous. There fore, Bull Trout biomass comes from the other species of fish, and smaller bulls inhabiting their streams.
The proportion of their eggs eaten by RMWF is small, and the contribution of bull eggs to RMWF biomass even smaller.
There is a much greater biomass of RMWF in streams than Bull trout biomass.
RMWF are sustained by feeding on invertebrates, primarily flies, mayflies, and caddis as identified in the literature.
This is basic food web ecology. Although there will be some positive resource flow from Bull Trout to RMWF, the inverse is much, much more significant.
Something along these lines which might be significant is the conversations longtime flyfisherman have been having about how the hatches on many different rivers have changed drastically. RMWF rely on bugs, and bugs have been changing.