Patch occupancy of stream fauna across a land cover gradient in the southern Appalachians, USA
| Autor: | John C. Maerz, Catherine M. Pringle, James T. Peterson, Ted L. Gragson, Kristen K. Cecala, John R. Frisch, C. Rhett Jackson |
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| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
geography geography.geographical_feature_category biology Occupancy Cobble Ecology 010604 marine biology & hydrobiology Drainage basin Land cover Large woody debris Aquatic Science Pleurocera biology.organism_classification 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Substrate (marine biology) Environmental science Cambarus |
| Zdroj: | Hydrobiologia. 773:163-175 |
| ISSN: | 1573-5117 0018-8158 |
| Popis: | We modeled patch occupancy to examine factors that best predicted the prevalence of four functionally important focal stream consumers (Tal- laperla spp., Cambarus spp., Pleurocera proxima, and Cottus bairdi) among 37 reaches within the Little Tennessee River basin of the southern Appalachian Mountains, USA. We compared 34 models of patch occupancy to examine the association of catchment and reach scale factors that varied as a result of converting forest to agricultural or urban land use. Occupancy of our taxa was linked to parameters reflecting both catchment and reach extent character- istics. At the catchment level, forest cover or its conversion to agriculture was a major determinant of occupancy for all four taxa. Patch occupancies of Tallaperla, Cambarus, and C. bairdi were positively, and Pleurocera negatively, correlated with forest cover. Secondarily at the reach level, local availability of large woody debris was important for Cambarus, availability of large cobble substrate was important for C. bairdi, and stream calcium concentration was important for P. proxima. Our results show the abundance of stream organisms was determined by the taxon-dependent interplay between catchment- and reach-level factors. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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