Unexpected appetites: Metabarcoding reveals grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) foraging behaviors in the Great Lakes

Grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) are herbivorous fish introduced to North America in the 1960s, and they are now established throughout the Mississippi River basin and Laurentian Great Lakes. Despite increasingly intensified management efforts, limited information exists on their foraging ecology. We used DNA metabarcoding to characterize the gut contents of grass carp captured from 2019 to 2022 to evaluate spatial, temporal, and environmental patterns in diet composition across Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. Contrary to long-standing assumptions that grass carp primarily consume submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), results from Lake Erie’s western and central basins revealed a diet dominated by terrestrial and terrestrial-wetland plant genera, including maples (Acer), willows (Salix), cottonwoods (Populus), and nightshades (Solanum). In contrast, fish harvested from Lake Erie’s eastern basin and Lake Michigan tributaries consumed more SAV, particularly pondweeds like Potamogeton and Stuckenia. Diet composition varied by basin, river, and year, but not by ploidy (diploid vs. triploid). Distance-based redundancy analyses identified environmental variables as drivers of diet variability. These findings reframe previous risk assessments which were based on diets from small artificial environments, suggesting greater dietary plasticity and revealing previously overlooked terrestrial-aquatic food web connections. Results presented here could inform management actions and sampling locations. Understanding grass carp foraging behavior in invaded systems can provide a critical tool for refining removal strategies, preventing further expansion, and improving future ecological risk assessments.