Osmeridae, Regan, 1913

Osmeridae View in CoL

The smelt Osmerus eperlanus (Linnaeus, 1758) is an important component of the food web in many lakes in south-east Norway. Several of the 22 studies that was retrieved by the search in some way evaluated the smelt in an ecosystem context, either as food for other fish ( Garnås 1983, Sandlund et al. 2005, Eloranta et al. 2019) or as a predator on zooplankton (Sandlund et al. 1987, Hessen et al. 1988). As it is prey for economically important species such as brown trout there has also been some interest in how smelt accumulate pollutants ( Frøslie et al. 1985, Skurdal et al. 1985).

There are also some studies on the present-day distribution of smelt, discussing either the presence of new locations following translocations ( Hagenlund et al. 2015) or the potential rediscovery of populations in locations where it was considered extinct (Kleiven 2000). This small-sized species is usually easy to see during the spawning season, or as food items in the stomach of predatory fish. However, as the species is small-sized, it can be overlooked when density is low or if fishing effort is limited.

The smelt is a very important player in the local food web, both as food for various predatory fishes and as an efficient zooplankton feeder. Thus, the smelt can be called a keystone species (Lammens et al. 1990, Sandlund et al. 2005), in the same way as the close relative the capelin Mallotus villosus (Müller, 1776) is a keystone species in the arctic marine environment (Hjermann et al. 2010). Given this, it should be important to know the dynamics of the smelt populations to better predict transfer of energy through the lake food web. However, such studies could not be found.