1. ASSEMBLAGE ORGANIZATION IN STREAM FISHES: EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATION AND INTERSPECIFIC INTERACTIONS
- Author
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Gary D. Grossman, Mary C. Freeman, Robert E. Ratajczak, and Maurice Crawford
- Subjects
Habitat ,Ecology ,Abundance (ecology) ,Environmental factor ,medicine ,Period (geology) ,Assemblage (archaeology) ,Interspecific competition ,Biology ,medicine.disease_cause ,Predator ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Predation - Abstract
We assessed the relative importance of environmental variation, interspecific competition for space, and predator abundance on assemblage structure and microhabitat use in a stream fish assemblage inhabiting Coweeta Creek, North Carolina, USA. Our study encompassed a 10–yr time span (1983–1992) and included some of the highest and lowest flows in the last 58 years. We collected 16 seasonal samples which included data on: (1) habitat availability (total and microhabitat) and microhabitat diversity, (2) assemblage structure (i.e., the number and abundances of species comprising a subset of the community), and (3) microhabitat use and overlap. We classified habitat availability data on the basis of year, season, and hydrologic period. Hydrologic period (i.e., pre–drought [PR], drought [D], and post–drought [PO]) represented the temporal location of a sample with respect to a four–year drought that occurred during the study. Hydrologic period explained a greater amount of variance in habitat availability data...
- Published
- 1998