Feeding habits influence species habitat associations at the landscape scale in a diverse clade of Neotropical fishes

Aim. A primary goal of community ecology is to understand the mechanisms that drive species’ spatial distribution and habitat associations. Species' geographic distribution can be influenced by the distribution of their prey partly because consumers' behavior is oriented to optimal energy use during foraging. We analyzed how differences in dietary preferences influence the spatial distribution and habitat associations of species at the landscape scale. We hypothesized that differences in feeding guilds will lead to divergent habitat association patterns among species.
Location. Amazon River drainage basin. 
Taxon. Characiform fishes in the family Serrasalmidae (piranhas and pacus). 
Methods. We used diet data to classify species into feeding guilds (frugivores, herbivores, piscivores, fin and scale feeders, and planktivores). We used three proxies of habitat association derived from satellite products: floodplain extent, landscape heterogeneity, and flood duration, in three distance buf...