Fish Species Traits and Communities In Relation To a Habitat Template for Arctic Rivers

Researchers: Nick Jones, Garry Scrimgeour, and Bill Tonn

Project Description: While streams and their fish communities have been studied intensively from many temperate regions, literature on arctic streams is comparatively sparse with respect to their physical, chemical, and biological characteristics, particularly fishes. Relative to temperate waters, streams in the Arctic are environmentally harsh and contain few fish species. Within the Arctic region, knowledge of a stream type filter can help us understand fundamental differences in stream characteristics (e.g., sediment laden vs. clear).  This filter is based on the idea that habitat provides the template on which evolution shapes life history characteristics to promote survival and reproduction.

In this study, we develop this conceptual model involving factors, events, and processes operating as filters at multiple spatial and temporal scales that structure local fish assemblages in Arctic streams.  We follow the work of Southwood and Townsend and Hildrew to hypothesize how arctic stream fishes might be assembled among six stream types, defined by several environmental gradients, including ice formation, flow and temperature regimes, sediment dynamics, and edaphic factors. We position this habitat-based stream-type filter between regional and local habitat filters, viewing fish assemblages as the product of this series of filters similar to the conceptual model  proposed by Tonn (1990; see also Poff 1997)

Collaborators and Participants: Kurt Fausch, David Hoeinghaus, Pete McIntyre, Michael Douglas, James Roberts, Bill Matthews, Nick Jones, Edie Marsh-Matthews, Godon Copp, Marlis Douglas, Colden Baxter, Gary Grossman, Marco Rodriquez, Jeff Falke, Don Jackson, Keith Gido, Pedro Peres-Neto, Tom Turner, Dana Infante, and others.

This research is towards a chapter Community Ecology of Stream Fishes: Concepts, Approaches and Techniques" a symposium at the AFS 2008 Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Canada. It has been 22 years since Community and Evolutionary Ecology of North American Stream Fishes" edited by W. Matthews and D. Heins was published. During the last 2 decades there have been numerous advances in theory and technology have altered the way scientist currently view stream fish ecology. This symposium attempts to capture the progress made.