Carpocalypse now: a morphological assessment of native fish response to invasive carp presence in the Kansas River- Data and R Files

Introduction: Intraspecific morphological variation in fish provides valuable insights into natural history, ecological adaptation, and responses to environmental variables, including invasive species. This study explores how both external (e.g., body shape) and internal morphological traits (e.g., gill raker count) change in native fish species in response to abiotic and biotic factors, with a particular focus on the impact of invasive bigheaded carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis and H. molitrix) in the Kansas River. Abiotic drivers such as temperature, water velocity, and ecosystem size were reviewed for their broad influences on morphology, whereas biotic factors like predation, intraspecific and interspecific competition, and invasive species were shown to trigger more nuanced and species-specific changes. Therefore, in this study we assessed the change in external and internal morphology of four native species across three reaches with varying invasive carp densities.
Results: Variation in our four native species in both external and internal morphology showed significant differences between population in difference reaches indirectly indicating that invasive species density and other abiotic factors could be driving differences in our native populations.
Conclusions: Differences in morphological variation between species population across three reaches provides a link to explore functional relationships between taxa and abiotic/biotic factors within an environment having implications for understanding ecosystem attributes, and invasive species effects on morphology.