Sánchez-Hernández, JavierGabler, Heidi-MarieAmundsen, Per-Arne2018-04-022018-04-022017Sánchez-Hernández, J., Glaber, H.-M. & Amundsen P.-A. (2017). Prey diversity as a driver of resource partitioning between river-dwelling fish species. Ecology and Evolution 7: 2058–2068http://hdl.handle.net/10347/16628Although food resource partitioning among sympatric species has often been explored in riverine systems, the potential influence of prey diversity on resource partitioning is little known. Using empirical data, we modeled food resource partitioning (assessed as dietary overlap) of coexisting juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and alpine bullhead (Cottus poecilopus). Explanatory variables incorporated into the model were fish abundance, benthic prey diversity and abundance, and several dietary metrics to give a total of seventeen potential explanatory variables. First, a forward stepwise procedure based on the Akaike information criterion was used to select explanatory variables with significant effects on food resource partitioning. Then, linear mixed‐effect models were constructed using the selected explanatory variables and with sampling site as a random factor. Food resource partitioning between salmon and bullhead increased significantly with increasing prey diversity, and the variation in food resource partitioning was best described by the model that included prey diversity as the only explanatory variable. This study provides empirical support for the notion that prey diversity is a key driver of resource partitioning among competing specieseng© 2017 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/BiodiversityCoexistenceDietary overlapInterindividual variationMixed modelsNiche theoryjournal article10.1002/ece3.27932045-7758open access