Download or read book The Impacts of Native and Nonnative Fish on Stream Communities written by Nicolaas W. Bouwes and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Native and Nonnative Fish Community and Food web Dynamics in Dryland Streams of the American Southwest written by Jane S. Rogosch and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freshwater biodiversity is at once the most diverse and the most imperiled among the world's ecosystems. In the southwest, regional biodiversity and endemism face challenges imposed by declining water availability and widespread nonnative species proliferation. In this dissertation, I explore how these challenges affect fish community dynamics and native species persistence in dryland rivers, and explore the effectiveness of nonnative removal programs toward native fish conservation. The overarching questions motivating my research are: (1) How are fish communities responding to a changing climate? (2) How does flow intermittence and species origin shape freshwater fish beta diversity across dryland riverscapes? (3) Can we restore native species food-web dynamics through invasive species management? (4) Do strategic and opportunistic removal programs result in measurable, and if so comparable, benefits to native species conservation? Demographic models linking native and nonnative populations to flow dynamics predicted that contemporary declines in the frequency of peak flows, and increases in drought frequency are likely to result in nonnative dominant fish assemblages and diminished native fish populations. I found that intermittent and perennial streams play complementary roles in supporting fish beta diversity, and that contributions of intermittent streams to overall beta diversity were relatively consistent through time, primarily supporting a unique composition of native fishes. Although nonnative species control and removal programs are a common management strategy they have not always been successful. However, I found that nonnative removal efforts allowed native species to recover in their food-web dynamics, by returning to higher trophic levels and isotopic niches comparable to individuals that did not co-occur with nonnative fishes. In a model informed by long-term monitoring programs, I also found that both opportunistic and strategic removal strategies were predicted to decrease native fish extinction probabilities. These results were encouraging, and demonstrated that removal programs can meet recovery goals even over large areas and long after nonnative species are established.

Download or read book Stream Fish Community Dynamics written by William J. Matthews and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-05 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive synthesis of stream fish community research ever produced. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Ecologists have long struggled to understand community dynamics. In this groundbreaking book, leading fish ecologists William Matthews and Edie Marsh-Matthews apply long-term studies of stream fish communities to several enduring questions. This critical synthesis reaches to the heart of ecological theory, testing concepts against the four decades of data the authors have collected from numerous warm-water stream fish communities in the central and eastern United States. Stream Fish Community Dynamics draws together the work of a single research team to provide fresh analyses of the short- and long-term dynamics of numerous streams, each with multiple sampling sites. Conducting repeated surveys of fish communities at temporal scales from months to decades, the authors' research findings will fascinate anyone searching for a deeper understanding of community ecology. The study sites covered by this book range from small headwater creeks to large prairie rivers in Oklahoma and from Ozark and Ouachita mountain streams in Arkansas to the upland Roanoke River in Virginia. The book includes • A comparison of all global and local communities with respect to community composition at the species and family level, emergent community properties, and the relationship between those emergent properties and the environments of the study sites • Analyses of traits of individual species that are important to their distribution or success in harsh environments • A review of evidence for the importance of interactions—including competition and predation—in community dynamics of stream fishes • An assessment of disturbance effects in fish community dynamics • New analysis of the short- and long-term dynamics of variation in stream fish communities, illustrating the applicability and importance of the "loose equilibrium concept" • New analyses and comparisons of spatiotemporal variation in community dynamics and beta diversity partitioning • An overview of the effects of fish in ecosystems in the central and eastern United States The book ends with a summary chapter that places the authors' findings in broader contexts and describes how the "loose equilibrium concept"—which may be the most appropriate default assumption for dynamics of stream fishes in the changing climate of the future—applies to many kinds of stream fish communities.

Download or read book Invasion Dynamics written by Cang Hui and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans have moved organisms around the world for centuries but it is only relatively recently that invasion ecology has grown into a mainstream research field. This book examines both the spread and impact dynamics of invasive species, placing the science of invasion biology on a new, more rigorous, theoretical footing, and proposing a concept of adaptive networks as the foundation for future research. Biological invasions are considered not as simple actions of invaders and reactions of invaded ecosystems, but as co-evolving complex adaptive systems with emergent features of network complexity and invasibility. Invasion Dynamics focuses on the ecology of invasive species and their impacts in recipient social-ecological systems. It discusses not only key advances and challenges within the traditional domain of invasion ecology, but introduces approaches, concepts, and insights from many other disciplines such as complexity science, systems science, and ecology more broadly. It will be of great value to invasion biologists analyzing spread and/or impact dynamics as well as other ecologists interested in spread processes or habitat management.

Download or read book Effects Of Salmonid Management On Native Species And Ecosystem Function In New York Streams written by Alexander V. Alexiades and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding how aquatic species and function in rivers are affected by land use and natural resource management is a primary concern of ecology and conservation science. This dissertation research aims to better understand the effects of fisheries management practices, specifically salmonid stocking, on stream environments. To accomplish this, I used large scale and long-term fisheries and habitat datasets, field collected biological and environmental data, and a suite of statistical analysis and modelling techniques. I found that salmonid stocking programs in New York can affect native species communities and ecosystem function through pathways that are often unrecognized or have not yet been fully studied. These results show that nonnative salmonid stocking can have a strong influence on the functioning of ecosystems through effects on nutrient cycles and impacts to invertebrate communities, suggesting that fisheries supported by the introduction of nonnative, hatchery raised fish should be considered in terms of impacts to ecosystem function.

Download or read book Battle Against Extinction written by W. L. Minckley and published by . This book was released on 1991-12 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1962 the Green River was poisoned and its native fishes killed so that the new Flaming Gorge Reservoir could be stocked with non-native game fishes for sportsmen. This incident was representative of water management in the West, where dams and other projects have been built to serve human needs without consideration for the effects of water diversion or depletion on the ecosystem. Indeed, it took a Supreme Court decision in 1976 to save Devils Hole pupfish from habitat destruction at the hands of developers. Nearly a third of the native fish fauna of North America lives in the arid West; this book traces their decline toward extinction as a result of human interference and the threat to their genetic diversity posed by decreases in their populations. What can be done to slow or end this tragedy? As the most comprehensive treatment ever attempted on the subject, Battle Against Extinction shows how conservation efforts have been or can be used to reverse these trends. In covering fishes in arid lands west of the Mississippi Valley, the contributors provide a species-by-species appraisal of their status and potential for recovery, bringing together in one volume nearly all of the scattered literature on western fishes to produce a monumental work in conservation biology. They also ponder ethical considerations related to the issue, ask why conservation efforts have not proceeded at a proper pace, and suggest how native fish protection relates to other aspects of biodiversity planetwide. Their insights will allow scientific and public agencies to evaluate future management of these animal populations and will offer additional guidance for those active in water rights and conservation biology. First published in 1991, Battle Against Extinction is now back in print and available as an open-access e-book thanks to the Desert Fishes Council.

Download or read book Invasive Species in Forests and Rangelands of the United States written by Therese M. Poland and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book describes the serious threat of invasive species to native ecosystems. Invasive species have caused and will continue to cause enormous ecological and economic damage with ever increasing world trade. This multi-disciplinary book, written by over 100 national experts, presents the latest research on a wide range of natural science and social science fields that explore the ecology, impacts, and practical tools for management of invasive species. It covers species of all taxonomic groups from insects and pathogens, to plants, vertebrates, and aquatic organisms that impact a diversity of habitats in forests, rangelands and grasslands of the United States. It is well-illustrated, provides summaries of the most important invasive species and issues impacting all regions of the country, and includes a comprehensive primary reference list for each topic. This scientific synthesis provides the cultural, economic, scientific and social context for addressing environmental challenges posed by invasive species and will be a valuable resource for scholars, policy makers, natural resource managers and practitioners.

Download or read book Interactions Between Native and Nonnative Species written by Julie Kay Henry Zimmerman and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although previous research has investigated competition between native and nonnative trout, few studies have examined effects of introduced trout on other species in coldwater stream communities. I designed a field experiment to examine interactions between native brook trout versus nonnative brown trout with native slimy sculpin to investigate whether introductions of nonnative trout affect food web relationships in small streams. I hypothesized that brown trout would compete with sculpin and reduce sculpin growth, whereas competition would not occur between brook trout and sculpin, based on the premise that brook tout and slimy sculpin have coevolved in Minnesota streams. Enclosures (1m2) were stocked with fish according to six treatments: combined-species treatments (juvenile brown trout with sculpin, juvenile brook trout with sculpin), single-species controls, and no fish. Fish were stocked at three densities to examine intraspecific versus interspecific competition. Replicates of each treatment were placed in riffles in Valley Creek, Minnesota, and six 38-day experiment trials were conducted over three summers (2002-2004). Enclosures did not reduce abundance of drifting invertebrate prey. Interactions between brown trout and sculpin led to reduced growth of both large sculpin and large brown trout in enclosures, whereas presence of brook trout was not associated with changes to sculpin growth. Presence of brown trout also led to indirect effects on food web dynamics that may have resulted in these observed changes in growth. Brown trout was the only species associated with a decrease in abundance of a benthic invertebrate taxon, suggesting that brown trout may feed in the benthos to a greater extent than brook trout. Brown trout were also associated with shifts in sculpin diets, indicating a change in sculpin feeding behavior when sculpin were with brown trout that was not evident when sculpin were alone or with brook trout. Feeding behavior and intraspecific interactions among brown trout, along with shifts in feeding behavior of sculpin when brown trout were present, likely was a mechanism underlying reduced growth of both species. My research shows that introduced brown trout have effects on the stream community in Valley Creek that are different than native brook trout.

Download or read book Brown Trout written by Javier Lobón-Cerviá and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 821 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brown Trout: Biology, Ecology and Management A comprehensive guide to the most current research, history, genetics and ecology of the brown trout including challenging environmental problems The brown trout is an iconic species across its natural European distribution and has been introduced throughout the World. Brown Trout offers a comprehensive review of the scientific information and current research on this major fish species. While the brown trout is the most sought species by anglers, its introduction to various waters around the world is causing serious environmental problems. At the same time, introduction of exogenous brown trout lineages threats conservation of native gene pools of populations in many regions. The authors summarize the important aspects of the brown trout’s life history and ecology and focus on the impact caused by the species. The text explores potential management strategies in order to maintain numerous damaged populations within its natural distributional range and to ameliorate its impacts in exotic environments. The authors include information on a wide-range of topics such as recent updates in population genetics, evolutionary history, reproductive traits and early ontogeny, life history plasticity in anadromous brown trout and life history of the adfluvial brown trout and much more. This vital resource: Contains the latest research on the biology and ecology of brown trout Includes information on phylogeography, genetics, population dynamics and stock management Spotlights the brown trout’s introduction to regions around the world and the serious environmental impacts Offers a comprehensive review of conservation and management techniques Written for salmonid scientists and researchers, fishery and environmental managers, and students of population genetics, ecology and population dynamics, Brown Trout explores the most recent findings on the history, ecology and sustainability of this much-researched species.

Download or read book Standing between Life and Extinction written by David L. Propst and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North American deserts—lands of little water—have long been home to a surprising diversity of aquatic life, from fish to insects and mollusks. With European settlement, however, water extraction, resource exploitation, and invasive species set many of these native aquatic species on downward spirals. In this book, conservationists dedicated to these creatures document the history of their work, the techniques and philosophies that inform it, and the challenges and opportunities of the future. A precursor to this book, Battle Against Extinction, laid out the scope of the problem and related conservation activities through the late 1980s. Since then, many nascent conservation programs have matured, and researchers have developed new technologies, improved and refined methods, and greatly expanded our knowledge of the myriad influences on the ecology and dynamics of these species. Standing between Life and Extinction brings the story up to date. While the future for some species is more secure than thirty years ago, others are less fortunate. Calling attention not only to iconic species like the razorback sucker, Gila trout, and Devils Hole pupfish, but also to other fishes and obscure and fascinating invertebrates inhabiting intermittent aquatic habitats, this book explores the scientific, social, and political challenges of preserving these aquatic species and their habitats amid an increasingly charged political discourse and in desert regions characterized by a growing human population and rapidly changing climate.

Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lost a Desert River and Its Native Fishes written by Gordon Mueller and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Colorado River had one of the most unique fish communities in the world. Seventy-five percent of those species were found nowhere else in the world. Settlement of the lower basin brought dramatic change to both the river and its native fish. Those changes began more than 120 years ago as settlers began stocking nonnative fishes. By 1930, nonnative fish had spread throughout the lower basin and replaced native communities. All resemblance of historic river conditions faded with the construction of Hoover Dam in 1935 and other large water development projects. Today, few remember what the Colorado River was really like. Seven of the nine mainstream fishes are now Federally-protected as endangered. Federal and state agencies are attempting to recover these fish. However, progress has been frustrated due to the severity of human impact. This report represents testimony, old descriptions, and photographs describing the changes that have taken place in hopes that it will provide managers, biologists, and the interested public a better appreciation of the environment that shaped these unique fish.

Download or read book Strategies for Conserving Native Salmonid Populations at Risk from Nonnative Fish Invasions written by Kurt D. Fausch and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native salmonid populations in the inland West are often restricted to small isolated habitats at risk from invasion by nonnative salmonids. However, further isolating these populations using barriers to prevent invasions can increase their extinction risk. This monograph reviews the state of knowledge about this tradeoff between invasion and isolation. We present a conceptual framework to guide analysis, focusing on four main questions concerning conservation value, vulnerability to invasion, persistence given isolation, and priorities when conserving multiple populations. Two examples illustrate use of the framework, and a final section discusses opportunities for making strategic decisions when faced with the invasion-isolation tradeoff.

Download or read book Assessing the Sustainability and Biological Integrity of Water Resources Using Fish Communities written by Thomas P. Simon and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-08-26 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the application of fish community characteristics to evaluate the sustainability and biological integrity of freshwaters. Topics include perspectives on use of fish communities as environmental indicators in program development, collaboration, and partnership forming; influence of specific taxa on assessment of the IBI; regional applications for areas where the IBI had not previously been developed; and specific applications of the IBI developed for coldwater streams, inland lakes, Great Lakes, reservoirs, and tailwaters.

Download or read book Multispecies and Watershed Approaches to Freshwater Fish Conservation written by Daniel C. Dauwalter and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Stream Crossings in the Western Boreal Forest written by Bryan Michael Maitland and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing anthropogenic development in response to rising demands for natural resources is a major concern for freshwater fish, particularly in resource rich regions such as Canada's boreal forest. Expanding networks of industrial resource roads has led to the installation of hundreds of thousands of stream-crossing structures that are becoming increasingly common anthropogenic features on North American riverscapes. These structures can reduce available fish habitat, deteriorate instream habitat, and disrupt ecological connectivity by acting as barriers to fish and aquatic organism movement. My objectives were (i) to determine the extent to which commonly installed stream crossings affect stream fish communities in a boreal forest watershed, and (ii) to assess the application of operational research tools that utilize an optimization framework for mitigating the effects of fragmentation on native freshwater fish and informing restoration planning in the boreal forest. I used mixed-effects modeling and multivariate analyses to determine the effects of stream crossings from 33 culverted, bridged, and reference streams in an industrializing region of the boreal forest in west-central Alberta. Instream habitat characteristics such as mean depth, percent fines, and turbidity showed significant between- as well as within-stream differences among stream crossings. I found that the majority of fish species exhibited significantly lower densities (n·m -2) in upstream habitats as compared to downstream habitats, including a significant reduction in Slimy Sculpin densities in streams with culverts compared to reference streams. Multivariate tests showed that fish assemblages differ as a function of stream type and location. The prioritization method utilized in this study suggests that large gains in potential connectivity could be realized with a moderate investment (~$200K to $500K). I found that the operational research tool can be used to develop cost-benefit curves from the study watersheds, which can be used to minimize overall restoration costs to achieve particular management objectives in watersheds of interest, as well as provide defendable evidence for budget planning to regulators and decision-makers. Additionally, varying model parameters that account for species-specific differences in habitat use (e.g. dispersal distance) affected prioritization solutions, and should be considered in future prioritization analyses. In addition to effecting fish passage and stream connectivity, my results suggest that culverts may also be altering fish habitat, further contributing to large-scale changes in stream fish communities in the boreal forest. Further, my research highlights the efficacy of a novel, easy to use optimization-based barrier prioritization toolset that has minimal data requirements, is applicable to both stream-resident and long-range migratory species, and significantly reduces the mathematical and technical expertise needed to perform relatively complex optimization analyses.

Download or read book Non native Species Size Distributions and Nutrient Recycling in Southwestern Stream Communities written by Keith J. Fritschie and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Non-native species introductions are a ubiquitous form of environmental change. However, the role of introductions in ecosystem functioning is still poorly understood, especially in highly invaded systems with multiple non-native species. This thesis employs a functional trait framework-- in which the net ecosystem effect of changing community structure is evaluated by quantifying change in the community-level distribution of biological traits-- to assess the potential effects of multi-species introductions on ecosystem functioning in the Verde River, Arizona, USA. Specifically, I assess changes in body size distributions associated with non-native fish and crayfish introductions to estimate change in consumer-mediated nutrient recycling-- an important size-scaling function in which aquatic consumers can control the rates and ratios of inorganic nutrient availability. In chapter 1, I compare the central moments of individual size distributions of basin-wide native and non-native fish species pools. Native and non-native species pools were characterized by significantly different mean, coefficient of variation, and skewness moments of individual size distributions. These differences were more pronounced within trophic guilds than across the whole community, and notably differences in higher order moments (CV, skewness) were relatively greater than differences in the mean of size distributions. In Chapter 2 I evaluated whether such changes in the variance of size distributions affected nutrient recycling independent of the mean. I coupled nutrient recycling incubations and field sampling of habitat-specific size distributions of a non-native crayfish (Orconectes virilis) to scale up nutrient recycling from individuals to aggregate ecosystem functioning using mean-only or variance-incorporating approaches. A mean-only approach overestimated true rates of aggregate nutrient recycling by as much as 20% in habitats with low mean body size, but the bias induced by ignoring variance declined with the mean of the distribution. Given that the relationship between individual body size and nutrient recycling is a general representation of many size-functioning relationships, these qualitative results likely hold for other consumer-mediated functions. In Chapter 3 I determined whether body size provided a common functional currency to predict individual nutrient recycling across multiple fish species, and in turn whether native to non-native fish turnover was expected to generate large differences in aggregate nutrient recycling in the Verde River. Body size-recycling models with species-specific parameters were more parsimonious than global models with parameters shared across species. Using species-specific models I found that non-native dominated communities excreted ammonium at similar rates as native-dominated communities, but phosphate at significantly lower rates. The resultant difference in the N:P ratio was surprisingly large, generally independent of body size, and potentially important for aquatic microbial communities in this system. By contrast, the global model incorporating body size but not taxonomy did not capture this significant N:P difference. Together these chapters suggest that quantifying change in body size distributions yields important ecological insights, but taxonomic identity or additional traits are still necessary for a full evaluation of the ecosystem-level effects of multi-species introductions.