Environmental Indicators of Habitat Quality in a Migratory Freshwater Fish Fauna

/ In general, diadromous (and particularly amphidromous and catadromous) freshwater fishes decline in frequency of occurrence, change age/size structure, and probably also decline in abundance with increasing elevation and distance upstream from the sea. In freshwater fish faunas with a high proport...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental management (New York) 2000-04, Vol.25 (4), p.357-374
Main Authors: McDowall, RM, Taylor, MJ
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
BIOLOGICAL INDICATORS
Environmental indicators
Environmental management
Environmental quality
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Fish migration
FISHES
FRESH WATER
Freshwater
Freshwater fish
HABITAT
MIGRATION
POPULATION DYNAMICS
RADIATION, THERMAL, AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTANT EFFECTS ON LIVING ORGANISMS AND BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS
WATER POLLUTION
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Summary:/ In general, diadromous (and particularly amphidromous and catadromous) freshwater fishes decline in frequency of occurrence, change age/size structure, and probably also decline in abundance with increasing elevation and distance upstream from the sea. In freshwater fish faunas with a high proportion of migratory species, as in New Zealand, these changes in occurrence and abundance result in a breakdown of the relationship between fish abundance and habitat quality, making application of the index of biotic integrity (IBI) as a measure of habitat quality problematical since the index depends on the relationship between population metrics and habitat quality. An alternative approach applicable to assessing temporal changes in habitat quality and that uses a large database on fish distributions, involves analysis of the distribution of species across their natural distributions. In this paper we generate curves of occurrence of species across ranges of altitude and distance inland and show, through comparisons of data subsets, that the curves are consistent estimators of species' occurrence and therefore useful as indicators of habitat quality.
ISSN:0364-152X
1432-1009
DOI:10.1007/s002679910028